Thursday, August 16, 2007

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Instead of waking up early like we had hoped, we again slept till noon. Asi es… (It happens…) Two of Niki’s friends from Georgetown met us at the hotel and we to lunch at 1234, the 24 hour restaurant we went to Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. But this time it was packed with business men and women and we ate a proper meal! Afterwards we walked about 1.5 miles through the city to Plaza de Mayo, the center of the Government and basically the entire city. It has the Casa Rosada (The Pink House) a.k.a. the Argentine White House. Remember Madonna and “Don’t cry for me Argentina…” from the balcony? That was the Casa Rosada. We went to the Museo Histórico inside but unfortunately the tours were cancelled for some unknown reason. Also in Plaza de Mayo is Banco Nacional de Argentina, Centro de Economia, Centro de Educación, Cabildo, and the Catedral Metropolitana. We went in the Catedral Metropoliana and saw the tomb of Jose San Martin, the liberator of all of Southern South America (Argentina, parts of Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay).

One of the most memorable things we saw in all of Argentina was the Madres de los Desaparecidos (Mothers of the Disappeared) marching around the Plaza de Mayo. Anywhere from 9,000 to 20,000 young people were kidnapped, tortured, and probably killed between the years 1976-1983 during the Anti-Communist movement in Argentina. Most of the bodies were never recovered and for many of the Desaparecidos, the government at the time completely erased their identity. To preserve the memory and make a stance against violations against human rights, many of the mothers of these young people continue to march around the plaza every Thursday afternoon. We just had really good timing and it was incredible to watch something with my very own eyes that I had learned about in the classroom. I bought a poster called Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) from the Mothers and now it is hanging up on my wall.
After exploring some of the most important places of the government and official history of Argentina, we strolled through the ancient, well known neighborhood San Telmo. The streets are cobble stone and it is full of fancy antique shops.

We went to Plaza Dorrego, where I bought a mate, which is a small hollowed out decorated gourd and a metal straw with a filter at the end. It kind of looks like drug paraphernalia, but it is used to drink the ever popular Argentine drink mate, which is an herbal tea. The tea leaves are crushed and placed in the gourd the hot water poured in. The filtered straw is to keep the floating leaves out. After playing tourists for so long, we were pretty pooped so we had coffee around 5:30 in a cute restaurant called Café Dorrego on the plaza. We took a cab back to the hostal and starting getting ready for dinner.

And so starts our night of adventures: We planned on meeting Niki’s friend at her Bed and Breakfast in Palermo Viejo (another neighborhood in BA) at 8:00. We took a cab to approximately where the friend had given Niki directions. We started follow the directions but when we should have been there, the address we had was about 8 blocks off from where we were. So we kept walking; all the way to the address we had. Unfortunately when we got to the address, there was no B&B to be found. We asked tons of people and no one had any idea. We knocked on the door of the address, hoping it was the right building but thinking it was actually an apartment building. Unfortunately, a husband and wife answered the door while we interrupted their dinner! Luckily they were very nice and tried to help us out. Anyway, this is turning into a unnecessarily long story, quite like our unnecessarily long adventure! We ended up going to a hotel where the receptionist was nice enough to look up the B&B on the internet and give us the right address! We took a cab and got there an hour and a half late! Niki’s friend felt really bad, but it worked out fine. Palermo is a great neighborhood and I enjoyed walking around, despite the fact that we were all hungry!

For dinner, Calli found a restaurant called Te Mataré Ramirez (I’m going to Kill You Ramirez) which was described in the guide book as something like an Argentine/French erotic dining experience you won’t forget with entertaining puppet shows and great food. I wanted to go to a restaurant that our guide book says was one of the best, most trendy restaurants in all of BA, but my vote lost. Anyway, about our little experience, lets just say, the guide book was right. We got there and the door was locked; the hostest had to open it for you. The entire restaurant was dark with only red lamps and candles for light. All around the walls were paintings of womens dresses and figures. The ceiling was a blue sky with playful clouds full of cherubs and naked bodies doing things I won’t describe. The menus were covered in erotic quotes comparing food to sex and every entrée was titled something inappropriate. All of us girls were second guessing our choice as we sat quietly in the overly sexually tense restaurant. We ordered our dinners, having no idea what they actually were and hoping they would be good. We continued awkwardly waiting as the clock slowly inched towards 11:00 pm. Finally, a group of waiters emerged from the kitchen to loud music and a spot light. They did a provocative little dance before jumping on stage and grabbing their puppets. Then, CENSURED CENSURED CENSURED. They took a break right when we finally got our food. We were all balancing between dieing laughing and shamefully covering our eyes while we ate our incredible, gourmet meals. I had baked rabbit with risottos in a fried cheese salad bowl. It might go down as one of the best meals I’ve ever had. The second have of the show started while we finished eating and CENSURED CENSURED CENSURED. Think Team America (the American puppet movie, don’t worry if you haven’t seen it, its not worth in) in the overly sexual Latin American context. Anyway, when we finally finished our dinner, we paid about 15 bucks a piece, which is about the most expensive you will ever pay in BA for only an entrée, and left. We skipped out on the usual coffee and dessert before things got too hot and heavy.

After our unforgettable dining experience, we went to an incredible bar called Milión. It is a three story old mansion renovated into a trendy night club. While we were hanging out, we ironically ran into the Brazilains from the hostal. In 3 story bar, in a city of 10 million people with more bars than you could imagine, what are the odds? Than my friend from Tulane, Christian Legett walked in! He came to meet up with the CIEE Buenos Aires group that was hanging out, one of which was Niki’s friend. Not completely as random, but still pretty awesome! So Christian and I got to catch up while the one of the Brazilians, Fernando, hit on Calli. Around 2, we were ready to head somewhere else and Calli needed to ditch the now drunk and desperate Fernando. When he headed to the bathroom, we ran out, hoping to ditch him. In the rush of it all, I unfortnately forgot to say goodbye to Christain! Anyway, as we were standing outside the bar trying to figure out which way to go to get back to the hostel, none other than Fernando walked out! So he followed us back to the hostal. Once there, all of us girls decided that we didn’t feel like dealing with drunk Brazilians, nor did we want to go to another bar/night club. Instead, we settled on dessert at our now favorite 24 hour 1234. Fernando was waiting for us in the lobby and we made Calli awkwardly tell him that we were going to get dessert and it was going to be pura chicas (only girls!). He was quite upset and jumped in a taxi as we walked the other way! Anyway, we enjoyed our desserts and went to bed early (around 4!) so that we could wake up early and explore more of the city on our last day.