Following la buena onda

After our super relaxing trip to Mendoza, the city gals and I were ready for a change of pace and made our way to la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. What I did not know before moving to Argentina is that, much like Washington DC, Buenos Aires is an autonomous district and is actually not a part of the Buenos Aires Province. In technical terms, it's its own thang. I live in Bahía Blanca, which is part of the Buenos Aires Province, and the capital of the province is actually La Plata, not the city of Buenos Aires. Confusing enough for you? Knowledge: dropped.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am a compulsive planner, and so it was that I became a bit anxious for the more touristy leg of our trip, because, alas, I did not have anything planned. I began to feel inadequate as a host and human being for not knowing enough about BA to develop a detailed itinerary for my friends, and I resigned, willingly, to learning about the city along with them. Here in Argentina, you will often hear the locals refer to "buena onda," which is basically "good vibes." It is a pretty versatile little phrase. A person can be "buena onda" if they are really chill, or you might go to a party for some drinks and the "buena onda," or good company. For this trip, I decided to follow the "buena onda" wherever it may lead and worry less about planning, for once. I should note that, in order to make myself feel a little better, I did make ONE reservation for us later in the week, to attend a closed door, or "puerta cerrada" dinner. This is a trendy thing to do in BA, where you go to a chef's home and have an intimate dinner with around 15 other people. At least I had that one plan to feel good about for the week...

We started off our first day in BA with a delicious breakfast in our neighborhood for the next few days, San Telmo. We received the recommendation from our Airbnb host, Mercedes, who we learned throughout the week is an urban architect, tango dancer, and complete badass. She is also, like, 70 years old yet stays out until at least 2 am every night. My friend Emily and I felt really cool one morning when she came up to us and told us that we looked like locals, then subsequently added that it was because we looked like complete shit. Needless to say, we quickly learned not to take her advice lightly.

After breakfast, we headed to La Boca, the colorful neighborhood in BA that you have probably seen if you've ever googled "Buenos Aires." La Boca, or "mouth" in Spanish, sits on the Matanza-Riachuelo River and was one of the first places that Italian immigrants settled in the city (later followed by immigrants from France, Spain, Germany, Greece, etc.). While La Boca still has plenty of character and flavor from its immigrant past, truth be told, it sort of turns into a tourist trap during the day. We still had a blast checking out some art, strolling down the famous street "El Caminito," and taking plenty of mandatory colorful pictures to make all of our friends really jealous.




As for the rest of our sight-seeing throughout the week, we opted to go on foot versus taking one of the hop-on, hop-off tour buses. This turned out to be a great decision, and we were able to see practically everything we wanted to see, including la Recoleta Cemetery, la Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosada, the Obelisco, and el Teatro Colón. Being the ambitious young ladies that we are, we had wanted to check out MALBA, the Museum of Latin American Art, on the same day after all of this, but opted for white wine in the sun, instead. I was starting to get used to this no-planning business...


Some of our favorite meals in BA were also completely spontaneous, either in places we stumbled upon in our neighborhood or based on recommendations of friends and friends of friends. We particularly loved having drinks and a traditional picada, or a meat and cheese board similar to charcuterie, at El Federal, a cafe-bar in our neighborhood that has been in operation since 1864!



One of our favorite nights resulted from yet another recommendation from our life coach Mercedes, which was an inexpensive tango lesson, followed by a performance by a live tango orchestra and some impressive dancers. One of my friends even got whirled around the dance floor by a strapping young lad, who, like any good leader, made her look like she was a pro. Let it be known that, in truth, it takes (at least) two (cocktails) to tango.


Despite all of our jam-packed days of doing whatever the hell we felt like doing, we did have time for our trip to MALBA, where we saw some really funky exhibits. We particularly enjoyed one of an artist who was typing out stream-of-consciousness stories projected onto a wall about the people in the room. We had a good laugh as he surmised that we were best friends from high school and that we were laughing and whispering to one another because we "had a plan." For once, good sir, you could not be more wrong. We also enjoyed when our friend Arie took a selfie with a man who had a lamp for a head.


So, back to that one thing I DID have planned for the trip, our puerta cerrada dinner. After a long day out-and-about, we returned back to our place for a siesta and our daily check-in to the real world. Around 8:30 pm, an hour before we were supposed to leave for our dinner reservation, I found an email from the restaurant stating that if I didn't confirm that we were coming by 5:30 pm that day, they would cancel our reservation. I completely panicked, realizing that the one thing I planned was probably not going to happen. Oh, the irony. I was shaking and angry and convinced we were all going to starve in the land of meats and wine, all because of me. We ended up calling the restaurant, explained the misunderstanding, and everything worked out fine. ALTHOUGH they DID place us in a separate room, indoors, away from all of the other dinner guests, who were outdoors. Interesting. Doing a little improvising themselves, I see...!

Lesson learned. Planning is sometimes futile, and in reality, it can take a lot of the fun out of things. Based on the great success we had in BA from just winging it, I just may have to continue this trend of nixing plans and following la buena onda. Anyways, here's another selfie of Arie, with a creepy puppet and a guy who looks like the creepy puppet. I'm honestly not sure which is which.

The universality of wine, music, and selfies

For Easter week, known 'round these parts as la Semana Santa, I was lucky enough to have three of my best friends visit me from the States. At first, I was nervous about having visitors just two weeks after moving here, mainly because I am Type A and wanted to make sure I could be the best tour guide and resident Spanish-speaker possible, but it turned out to be an absolutely perfect time for them to come. After spending a few weeks here, the initial honeymoon phase was starting to wear off a bit, and I found myself getting a little homesick. What better cure than spending the holiday with dear friends and excessive amounts of wine? When I say excessive, I am not being facetious. I actually mean excessive. The definition of excessive is "more than necessary, normal, or desirable; immoderate." This is the word that I mean to use.

The girls arrived in Mendoza early Friday morning, and I flew in later that night to meet them. I cannot tell you how comforting it was to see them at our place, waiting for me, with a glass of wine ready for me on the table. We spent the evening catching up a bit, with wine, and then headed out on the town for more wine and empanadas. It was then that the girls became acquainted with the very, very long mealtimes here in Argentina. For a full-blown dinner, you usually need to allot around 4 hours, but for a snack of empanadas and wine, we were only there for, oh, about 3. Dinner also rarely starts before 10 pm unless you are a n00b, so needless to say, we have some pretty late nights here!

Mendoza is well-known, obviously, for the incredible wine, and also has a killer culinary scene. For this reason, most of our trip to Mendoza focused around the unbridled consumption of meats and wine. We spent two days in the downtown Mendoza, relaxing in equally massive and gorgeous Parque General San Martín, having a delicious lunch at Maria Antonieta, and taking plenty of siestas. The siesta is something that we in the States would not normally incorporate into vacation plans, especially when traveling to a foreign country, because we feel the need to maximize our time out and about seeing the sights. That being said, when your dinners don't start until 10 or 11 pm and last for 4-5 hours, naps become an essential part of your life. We also found that we had more time (and energy) to do what we wanted to do because of our midday naps. In summary, I am sold on siestas and I think my friends are, too. I think this will go over super well when they return to New York and let their managers know that they now require midday naps.

Naps and lying prostrate are also necessary when you eat steaks like this one, that fed FOUR PEOPLE at Francis Mallman 1184.

Before:

After:

Way after:

After our stay in downtown Mendoza, we moved to a new local, closer to the vineyards in an area known as Chacras de Coria. We had planned for one of our days out in wine country a bike tour of two different vineyards in the Luján de Cuyo region. Call me crazy, but before this tour, I had envisioned myself on a beach cruiser, in a sundress, giggling and swerving with a glass of wine in hand. This was not the case. When our tour guide (and Arie's future husband) Sergio came to pick us up for the tour, he had four intense mountain bikes in tow. It turned out to be QUITE the workout, but totally worth it. We definitely earned our wine!

Luckily for us (read: me), after the five-course lunch with wine pairings at the second vineyard, Sergio drives his customers back to their destination. Here we are, at lunch with Sergio. We all sort of look like meth junkies with rotting teeth, because we have consumed lots of red wine by this point:

Little did we know how much fun the ride home would be. It turns out, Sergio had a CD he had burned in the car (respect) with high-quality selections including, but not limited to, "Call Me, Maybe" and "Sexy Bitch." This is the moment in which I realized that language barriers, are in reality, not a thing. Language barriers are man-made. If you think about it, language barriers only come up in times of conflict, when we are frustrated and can't (or rather, choose not to) understand someone. People will chalk uncomfortable situations or confrontations up to a language barrier and move on. In reality, guys, we all just want to have a drunken afternoon dance party in a car. I find it important to note that Sergio was not drunk. He just has the best job ever and gets to drive pretty drunk girls around for money.

As if this wasn't already the "best day ever," we had plans that evening to have dinner at the home of a dear friend of mine, Pedro, that I met here in Bahía Blanca. He invited us over to try a typical Argentine dish, pollo al disco. Upon arrival, the language barrier demon started haunting me again, and I became worried that my friends would not be able to talk to anyone, since only one of them could speak some Spanish, and Pedro and his roommates did not speak much English. I quickly realized (like, within the first two minutes) that this was not going to be a problem. Everyone immediately started mingling and talking, with the help of our BFF, wine.

After the delicious meal, Pedro explained the rule of his household: every guest that entered was required to play a musical instrument. He handed instruments to each of us, and we began what was one of our favorite nights of the trip (and ever). Pedro and his friends put on a full-blown musical perfomance, complete with guitars, piano, trumpet, and flute, playing everything from tradtional Chilean folk tunes to the Backstreet Boys and Blink-182. As I sat back in my chair and watched my three friends learning a traditional Argentine dance, la zamba, I honestly could not help but smile. Despite the fact that we couldn't speak the same language, we had all come together to laugh, drink, dance, and sing. As I said before, language barriers are some bullshit.

Ok... except for the time when I tried to call a cab for us and got hung up on three times. And the time when the guy at the ice cream store didn't understand that my friend just wanted chocolate crunchies on her ice cream cone, and I said "fuck." I still feel kinda bad about that. I'm telling you, people, ONLY IN TIMES OF CONFLICT.