mish&grey: New home

We spent over a month in BA. After months of moving around it felt like home.

We rented a gorgeous apartment in northern Palermo, close to everything we needed, including a big park, heaps of restaurants, bars, shops and important bus stops.

Living room of our apartment

Grey in the kitchen making mate

Grey sleeping on the bed ... almost

Buying groceries ... vino y cervezas

We took 3 weeks of Spanish classes at VAMOS Spanish School – our teacher, Renata, was a tiny, cute, Argentinian, Jewish, left-wing, student of linguistics, who taught us a lot about Argentinian culture, and a little Spanish along the way. Our classmates changed from week to week and included Faith from Montana, Angus the existentialist from South Africa, Sven the smoker from Amsterdam, Rebecca the computer IT professional’s wife from Boston (zzz...), Michael the posh-Cambridge-English-speaking German, Stephen, the sexually confused 47 year old from Newtown (recently divorced and “experimenting”), and Paul, the very sweet, geeky football fan from Liverpool. Fun Times!

At the BAIS international students party in Palermo Viejo

Our apartment was just down the road from a huge park, complete with a lake, rose gardens, playing fields, a running track and endless rollerbladers (apparently roller blades are cool in BA!). We spent a lot of time there, drinking mate and trying to reverse the effects of eating too many ham and cheese sandwiches in Brazil.

Grey's favourite tree

Roses

Gooses (geeses? geese?) on the pond

Drinking mate

Other things we did:

Explorations of Recoleta, including the famous cemetery, where Eva Peron is buried, and fine European architecture;

Guido Palace Hotel ... note "The Situation"

Another healthy lunch at Romario ... famous for it's delivery boys, who work on rollerblades

Explorations of San Telmo, including the Sunday antiques market, local bars and old poster shops (I bought many beautiful posters and subsequently lost them all at an airport);

Another street, another amazing music shop

Amazing Sunday Sausage Sizzle place

BBQ

Cool cutout coin charms - about $15AUD each

Coffee on a corner with Brendos

Squashed bottles

Grey and Mafalda, Argentinian comic strip character (1964 - 1973) - 6 year old girl, deeply concerned about humanity and world peace and rebels against the current state of the world (Wikipedia)

Antiques stall

Explorations of Boca;

Explorations of Palermo, cool restaurants, bars and shops;

La Cabrera ... A famous upmarket parilla in Palermo Viejo. Sam ate the whole of this 800grm steak in about 20 minutes. Me and G shared one.

Grey's artistic shot

Almacen Secreto, not so secret restaurant, although we did have to cross train tracks and walk down deserted streets to find it. The food in regional Argentinian (north, middle and south). We ate mushroom and tomato casserole, locro (mixed meat stew of Gaucho origins), humitas (Argentinian take on tamales) and something else

Dinner at a local club/restaurant with built in indoor soccer field and tango room. Gnocchi for gnocchi-day (29th of each month) and schnitzel

Plaza Serrano, beer and peanuts

Volta gelato - banana split, maracuya y chocolate blanco ... amazing

Dogwalkers ... my favourite thing

Huge mixed parrilla plate at Las Cabritas, about $22 AUD, dinner, lunch, dinner and lunch. Contents: chicken, blood sausage, chorizo, bife de chorizo, other types of steak, intestines, glands, etc.

Patagonian lamb souvlaki at Sarkis

Another night, another massive steak - Don Julio, Palermo Viejo. If you ever go here, DO NOT order the pasta.

Dinner with Mum at Las Cabritas (we loved it so much we had to return)

Explorations of the local zoo - where you can buy animal feed apparently fit for all species in the zoo for 5 pesos;

Black bears performing tricks for popcorn

Explorations of cooking (Grey mainly, but I helped);

Grey's bolognaise, and my salad (to the right). I also grated the cheese.

Grey's cha-ca-la-vong, Vietnam fish dish, but it took a trip to Barrio Chino and many hours to source the necessary ingredients. We had challas for Chabbas.