The Plus
My favorite activity (inactivity?) in Buenos Aires is to sit on a park bench and glimpse the world go by. Parks are, after all, the necessary ingredient to make a city a liveable space. It so happens that there are plenty of parks and plazas here, making it easy for me to indulge myself.
Two blocks away is Plaza Vicente Lopez. Four blocks the other way is Plaza Paraguay and the large park next to the Engineering School. There's lots of green space around Recoleta Cemetery and, on the other side of Libertador, the Law School sits between Parque Thays on one side and La Flor on the other. Between Alcorta and Libertador is another series of parks that go all the way to Palermo.
Further away to the northwest, but still in walking distance, are Parque Las Heras and the Thays Botanical Garden, and beyond those is Parque 3 de Febrero with lakes and an immense rose garden. To the east, on the other side of Puerto Madero, is the largest open space of all, the Costanera Sur ecological reserve, whose long walking trails have benches conveniently located every hundred yards or so.
All that is to name just a few. Wherever we go in the city, there are many small, inviting plazas with lots of benches and if we have an extra five minutes or so I try them out.
What is especially nice this year is the obvious care and effort the city of Buenos Aires is putting into their public spaces. On our prior visits, we noticed that many parks were in disrepair, poorly maintained and sometimes downright seedy. Some still are. But the increased attention is immediately obvious: no trash (and plenty of trash cans), trimmed lawns and bushes, clean walkways, and tidy benches.
In contrast, the Sundance Square core of downtown Fort Worth does not have a single bench, much less a plaza.
The Minus
The biggest difficulty we have in Buenos Aires and the main reason we'll probably never stay here for more than a month or two at a time is figuring out what to eat.
Back in Fort Worth, Terri and I eat mostly at home, a lot of meat, vegetables, and cheese as we try to limit our carbs. (We have a Costco membership just so we can buy huge chunks of Jarlsberg and Manchego and Gruyere.) Here, 'meat' means beef; chicken, pork, and seafood are not nearly as popular. Since it's late winter, there aren't many fresh vegetables. Imports here are very expensive or not available at all, so we have to rely on Argentine versions of popular lunch meats and cheeses, and they aren't really that good.
Add to this the fact that we're in a rental apartment with a limited set of cookware and you'll understand that for us "eating in" in Buenos Aires usually means heating up a prepared something or other we bought at a nearby shop. Why bother?
Much less eating in means much more eating out. Visions of grilled steak, french fries, and a glass of malbec may sound awfully appealing, but trust me, after a while it gets old. The cuisine in Buenos Aires is generally dull and bland, since the Argentines abhor spicy foods.
A signature dish here is a plate of empanadas: tasteless white pastries with bland meat or vegetable fillings. The Argentines also love pizza, which can be quite good (our favorites this year have been Güerrin and Romario) but our bodies are not used to the huge ingestion of carbohydrates. The favorite porteño sandwich is two squares of crustless white Wonder-like bread with a slice of ham and cheese inside.
Even so, we've found some tasty food. Just yesterday we tried a new place called be Frika, which offers 15 varieties of 'mini' hamburgers. We were doubtful about the size of these things, but two of them with french fries and a beer turned out to be a perfect meal. I only wish we had tried them earlier in the trip.
Writing "earlier in the trip" reminds me that we leave in five days.
Here's my Flickr snaps so far.
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