Last weekend was our last in Buenos Aires, at least for now. I mean, who knows, right? Friday was Valentine’s Day so we celebrated with a romantic dinner of leftovers at home. We did have gin and tonics with a berry-infused gin so at least our drinks looked appropriately festive.

Saturday we decided to have brunch at a cafe. There are so many here and when we get down to the end of a stay, we try to go to the places that we kept passing and saying, “We should go there!” We had a delicious breakfast sitting outside watching the world go by. We were gathering energy to do a “pre-pack” of all our stuff. We wanted to know how much extra weight we could carry in bottles of wine. We are figuring the wine in Argentina beats the wine in Costa Rica and we want to enjoy with David and Stacey.

After stuffing everything into our three bags, we figure we have about 6 kilos left. That’s four bottles of wine! Off we went to the wine shop to make our purchases. We hadn’t been to this shop before and I’m sorry for that. It is around the corner, but looked a little upscale and we didn’t want to buy a lot of expensive wine, but really the prices were quite reasonable and the wine guy was very nice. We were joking that we would buy one of the bottles of $200+ wine and he said we were better off having a nice dinner. I’m sure he’s right on that one.

That night, we had a traditional Argentinian meal of Indian food. It was Argentinian in the sense that we ordered it picante (spicy) and, yes, it did have a spice, but I wouldn’t have called it spicy. Our friend Marco is a classic Porteño who says he wants to taste the food, not the heat. Sure, if you’re eating a slab of meat cooked on the asado, but if you’re eating Indian food, the spice is part of the point.

Adventures in Ubers

Speaking of Marco, and his lovely wife, Barbara, we intended to meet them last Wednesday at their apartment at 20:20. Steven was a bit confused because Google said it would take 20 minutes to get there, but Uber said 40. Hmmm. Did you know that there’s a city of Buenos Aires and a province of Buenos Aires that have streets with the same name? If you’re not careful, you can hit the wrong one in Uber and end up in a sketchy part of town. We were wondering where were were going, when Steven realized the mistake. Luckily, our drive was nonplussed. We simply reset the route, first to their apartment and then, when they realized we would never make it to our dinner reservation on time, directly to the restaurant (but we did have a very nice tour of places in Buenos Aires province that we don’t want to visit).

When we arrived at the restaurant, La Casona de Belgrano, (sorry, Insta link), I thought we might be in the wrong place again. We approached a guard station and were asked about reservations, so at least then I felt secure that we were at a restaurant, which turned out to be on the grounds of Club Belgrano, a sports club and community center. Luckily, Marco, Barbara, and Barbara’s 14-year-old daughter, Emma, drove up just then so we avoided any more confusion. Marco had already decided that he and Steven were having the osso buco, which they shared with Emma, while Barbara and I had pasta. Allegedly, the meat dish was enough for 3-4 people, but Steven took home the leftovers at Marco’s insistence, and he had two more generous meals. After dinner, we went for a walk through a lovely park and then Marco graciously drove us home down Avenida del Libertador.

Tennis Time

We were very excited for Sunday because we had bought tickets to the Argentina Open tennis finals. In our journeys, we had yet to attend a tennis match. This is an ATP 250 tour event, so it didn’t have top-tier athletes, but these guys are nothing to sneeze at. We arrived for the doubles finals, in which an Argentinian, Guido Andreozzi and French player, Theo Arribage, were competing against two Brazilians, Rafael Matos and Marcelo Melo.  Go Argentina guy! It was warm, but cloudy and we were thinking we had perfect tennis weather. As the match got underway, we began to notice a bad trend — the clouds were disappearing. Did I mention that the seats at the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club are plastic? A bit into the third set (it was one-set all), we decided to head into the food area to find some shade. Luckily, we found seats at a picnic table right in front of the screen showing the match. It was a bit behind, so we knew that our team won the third-set tiebreaker, and the match, 7-5 4-6 10-7, by the roaring crowd before we saw the final point.

The singles finals featured Argentina vs. Brazil. You may not know this, but there’s a rivalry between these two nations. That made the match of Argentinian Francisco Cerúndolo vs. Brazilian Joao Fonseca a ton of fun. The crowd was really into it, singing, waving flags and cheering. It was all great until a little argument broke out and the security arrived. As far as I know, it was just a verbal joust and all was well again. Sadly, Fonseca (ranked 99) completely outplayed Cerúndolo (ranked 28). Oh well. We hated to admit it, but we were glad it was only a two set plus tiebreaker match. It was about 30 degrees C (86 F) and we were in full sun the whole time.

We eagerly looked forward to Monday when cousin Robin and her friend Meg would arrive. Robin is nearing the end of her latest grand world tour and we were excited that she was making a pit stop in BA. We did a little hanging out and then ate Greek food for dinner. They spent Tuesday doing touristy stuff with two other friends and Steven took them out to a parilla Tuesday night. The only hitch in the visit was a broken water heater. Oops! Sorry Robin and Meg for the cold showers!! It’s all fixed now that you’re gone. (I am sure the two events are unrelated…I think.)

As is our norm, we are completely out of food since we stop buying a week or so before we leave a place. I really hate to waste food (although this time some over-the-hill salad got tossed). Today we finally went to a vegetarian restaurant. There are bunches around here, but we don’t go out as often as we seem to and we mostly eat salad for lunch. I found one, Coma Veggie, that had pizza, so Steven could eat something resembling his normal diet, while I was able to eat a yummy lentil burger (yummy lentil burger – the definition of an oxymoron – go ahead look it up in the dictionary).

Wednesday night, we headed over to Marco and Barbara’s for an early dinner at 21:00. (Yes, we made it there without incident. I think I checked 10 times to make sure we were going an address in the City of Buenos Aires – not the province) Marco made his grandma’s famous milanesa recipe. Milanesa is everywhere here and I equate it to chick-fried steak, not that I’ve ever eaten either of those two. Ever the kind hosts, they are preparing risotto for me. Yum! We had a grand evening with them and were sad to say goodbye, but we always hold out hope that we will meet again. They got us the best gift ever: A Gringo’s Guide to Understanding Argentines. We’re going to study up for our next visit.