Buenos Aires...Futból, Tango, Carne y mas

Where to begin with this city?? The province of Buenos Aires is home to a third of the population of Argentina. The city is huge. And incredible. It seems that you can ride the subté (BA´s underground) for 20 minutes in any direction and when you get out you feel like you are smack dab in the middle of the city. It is a city, like New York et al., where you could easily spend a month and not see everything. I arrived in the city on an overnight bus from Mendoza and immediately threw the running shoes on to explore a bit. I was fortunate enough to run into a woman who invited me to run with her and a friend of hers. So with only two hours under my belt in BA, I had run 10 miles, explored a good part of the neighborhood of Palermo and met a couple of very nice locals. The rest of the 10+ days in BA held much of the same... exploring parks, going to a couple of soccer matches, meeting locals, eating lots and staying up late - I probably ate dinner after 1:00 am 3 times and my average time to call it a night was somewhere in the 5am neighborhood. I was also lucky enough to have my good friend Brendan in town to explore.

One night I met up with Brad & Kim (friends of the family from CT) for an amazing feast of meat, meat and more meat. Not only was the food amazing, but I also had the opportunity to discuss all things Whalers with a fellow fanatic in Brad. Other highlights included an interesting visit to a massive BINGO parlor (trying to play the first game in Spanish at a hellish pace was like trying to learn Calculus in Japanese), the Clasico which is described later, a tango show (who knew), a visit to a cemetery (who knew again), an amazing bookshop inside of an old theatre, helping a couple locals change a flat and walking for miles and miles throughout this truly amazing city. It was extremely difficult to leave Buenos Aires, but there´s something in the back of my head that says I´ll be back here sometime soon...