Buenos Aires is absolutely lovely, and so green!
I wish I could say this beautiful photo was taken on my jog along Avenida Adolfo Berra in the newly beloved Buenos Aires. I wish. Instead it was taken from the window of my taxi en route to Palermo SoHo to shop after my sites at Park Hyatt and Four Seasons. Shop. That entailed a quick peruse through a street market, a short negotiation on two pair of super cute Argentine earrings, and then I spotted the pub.
This was yesterday afternoon, but let me start with my arrival in Argentina a few days earlier. You need the back story.
First of all, Brazil blows. I couldn’t get out of there soon enough. I originally reported how smooth everything was in Brazil. Argentina was even better! And it involved a reciprocity fee in addition to immigration. But I can now enter Brazil, Argentina and Chile for the next ten years free of charge! I won’t be taking advantage of the Brazilian admittance anytime in the near future, if ever. Might even boycott 2016 Olympics! 🙂
Anyway, Argentina is just lovely! The people, the food, the sprawling, chic and beautiful ciudad reminded me so much of Paris! It was amazing. Blew me away, maybe even more so than Istanbul. That would be a tough call. I was blown away, not quite sure why, by all the trees all over the place. There seemed to be every varietal of tree all within the one city. Palm trees next to fig trees, next to loads of other types of trees that I don’t know the names of. I thought certain trees only existed in particular climates, and perhaps that is the case and I’m just a bit daft. But for whatever reason, the Argentine trees left an impression on me.
I will definitely be taking advantage of my paid reciprocity fee to Argentina. This portion of my South American trip will be forever close to my heart.
On day two in Argentina, I went jogging, worked, the usual… and was feeling antsy having not seen anything yet in my two days. I finally put work to rest and just had a quick walk around Recoleta, by the cemetery and vicinity. Work started to get impatient and I found myself rather far out so I took a taxi to Park Hyatt. I was kind of discombobulated, more so than my norm, as I entered. I hear someone call my name. Mind you, I was sober. Great minds obviously think alike, it must’ve been about 4:30pm-ish and clearly time for a cocktail. I kid you not, the illuminating Susie was standing there on the steps calling my name. Duncan and Susie are old buddies from B&B and used to live in San Fran. I think they moved home to New Zealand (sadly, though happily for them) before I moved to New York, and I think before LMC Direct’s inception. What a GRAND surprise!!! Neither of us could really believe it for a good pause of time! For me, seeing the Oldes was my best travel surprise to date.
I’m now going to loop you back in on yesterday’s taxi ride to shop and my propitious entrada to the pub. I had to meet Duncs and Suse for dinner at 9:00pm. I had four hours to kill, which, along with several brain cells, I did well. There were four Brits on a ‘boyfriend trip’ at the bar, pissed still from the night before (in the same pub), and we got on well from the get-go. They pretended to be annoyed that my grey gooses were being served with lemon zest around the edge of my glass and garnished with hearts and flowers. 🙂 Turns out the boys are headed to Rio, same time as me. Oh man, what a hard night that’s going to be! (stay tuned!) They were super funny, but admittedly got me a bit ‘pissed’ with shots and who knows what else. The boys needed etiquette lessons (sigh… the English) understanding why its NOT okay to call the bartender Pablo even though his name is Ignacio, and some taming down of their desire to play Phil Collins, which, oddly enough, I mentioned him previously being played in the Brazilian taxi. It was all good fun, but after four hours of Peter, Paul, Paul and Brian (who did NOT get why I told them they needed a Mary in their crew), I showed up to dinner already well juiced up. Thankfully, I’ve got this hollow leg (yes, the left one) I was blessed with at birth.
Needless to say, I had a hell of a time packing and trekking to the airport today. And what is up with Excedrin!!? When will you come back to me!? It was a rather miserable journey over the snowcapped Andes to Santiago. But the Ritz is so amazing, they went to the pharmacia to collect la aspirina con cafeina for me! Now she (me) is back in the saddle again and my Chilean Sea Bass, while in Chile, just arrived!
Buen provecho! xx
Best travel surprise EVER… from ‘half the world away’ equally
