buenos aires mi querido

It seems impossible that I've only been here a week. The time has flown, but I also feel like we've seen and done so so much. Every day we get up and sit outside to have our café con leche (as good as in Spain) and our medialunas. Then we walk to wherever we've decided to go for the day, which is usually very far because the blocks are huge here. Everything seems close on the map, but it's actually quite a large city. After a full day, we come back and take a long nap....then dinner around 10:30 or 11:00 and another evening walk. It's perfect.

On my plane ride over, I happened to be sitting next to a woman, Alcira, who has her own real estate agency. She is nothing short of hilarious. She is 70 years old and wears a lot of leopard print clothing and had some serious botox action going on. As we rode around in a taxi with her, looking at apartments, she alternated between describing what we were driving by and screaming about the excess of exhaust from the buses. She also imitated a British accent, saying, "it's quite chilly or quite hot". She would be the perfect character for an Almodóvar film.

Though we saw some interesting apartments with Alcira, one of which had a pool, we ended up finding an amazing place through a Fulbright connection. We were completely charmed the second we walked in, though it's much bigger than what we need. There is an upstairs with a patio with a PARILLA on it, so I'll be embracing my Argentine roots and having lots of asados. We move in Feb. 1st, so I'll post pictures then. For now, here are some photographs of what we've been up to.

Home is a boutique hotel near our current apartment, that has a gorgeous bar outdoors. We went there for drinks one night.

Oh just a friendly cockroach in the middle of the sidewalk....

Stretching?

Pete is slightly to very obsessed with this old Spanish restaurant, El Preferido de Palermo

This is a café in the neighborhood of San Telmo. This little dog came right in and started doing tricks so we would give him food. I did.

Perhaps one of the best street performers we've seen yet...

I'm also very excited because I found an organic farm that allows you to place orders online (choosing from a bunch of fruits, vegetables, and herbs that are in season) and get them delivered. This is becoming a lot more common in the US, but it's incredibly expensive whereas a box with 15 choices here costs about $17! We also found a natural foods restaurant in our soon to be neighborhood, which not only has amazing food, but also sells natural and organic products (yes, paraben free!).

Needless to say, we are quite happy here.