Why You Want to Live in Buenos Aires: Random pictures

I know I'm like a broken record, but my sister tells me she likes pictures, so I post more pictures. Even when they aren't very good.

This is my supermarket, Coto. Not sure what I was doing this day...I was going to the subway I think, and looked back to snap the picture.

I must have been going to Alto Palermo...yup, I was. Alto Palermo is one of the nicer shopping malls in BA. This is the food court, up on the top level (if I recall correctly). I went looking for Wii controllers and it was a fail.

There seems to be no Wiis in the country. I think I saw a Wii priced at something like 1k USD. yeah. wow. socialism is great.

Random street in Recoleta/Barrio Norte. By the way, what is Barrio Norte? Depending on who you talk to, it's the area between Palermo and Recoleta....or the area between Recoleta and Tribunales...or the northern part of Recoleta. It's a little like River Oaks, in that everyone claims to be in Barrio Norte, even if they live at Buffalo Speedway and Kirby.

Well, this was a great picture, wasn't it? It's Plaza Vicente Lopez. There's a fountain in the background, but my photography skillz are lacking.

Not sure, still the same area.

The other side of the plaza. By the way, Plaza Vicente Lopez is not in Vicente Lopez (which is technically a city and country immediately outside Capital Federal).

I made it to Republica. This is the inside.

This is my appetizer. Simple, but it worked pretty well. Note the book. Ten bonus points if you identify it. If it's not my favorite book of all time, it's close.

My main course was a Penne with dried tomatoes and basil. It was good, but I've more or less had it before for lunch here. It was good, but schmeh. This was the dessert. The cheesecake was a bit dry (too long in the fridge?), but those figs (?) were tasty.

Anyway, $13, ship it? I swear I'll never go to a restaurant again in the US because I'll get so angry at how expensive it is. This was no Sudestada for lunch -- even though Sudestada is appetizer, main course, and no dessert -- but man, it was good.

This is the little passageway where Republica is located. Inside that unique little passageway are a few restaurants. 3 are well regarded. Republica, Sirop, and Nectarine. Republica didn't blow me away. Went there for dinner tonight and had extraordinarily slow service. Food was good, but nothing amazing. I felt a little like Jenn did at Cafe Annie: is it really something I should be paying a premium for? Yeah, it's good. But where was the daring? In my two experiences at the restaurant, I literally heard English being spoken by every table. It wasn't all by native speakers, but it's quite obviously tourist dependent.

Especially after going to El Baqueano in San Telmo last week, I was so underwhelmed. El Baqueano was incredible. For the $120 peso tasting menu we had 7 courses with 7 paired wines (it's $165 for the premium wines). Everything was gourmet, everything had thought put into it. The meats were exotic, and while I'm generally skeptical of exotic meats (there's a reason we eat beef, chicken and pork), it was phenomenal. And you know how some meals get better and some get worse with age? El Baqueano continues to improve. Also, they change their tasting menu every day. I should probably be thankful that it's not near me, as I'd probably start eating there daily. The only negatives are that it's in San Telmo, which is not my area, as I said.

Look, I am bad at taking out photos, no? That wasn't something of a translation from Spanish to English of what I'd have said. Anyway, this is El Ateneo, which is a famous bookstore here inside of a former theater.

To be honest, I've been to Bookstop in Houston, over on West Alabama and Shepherd. And, schmeh, this reminds me alot of that. Although this picture is quite dark (and my stats say that almost none of you click the pictures) this is from the second floor of 4 floors. Despite being quite large, there aren't that many books. Despite many trips there with the intent to purchase, I am a failure. I don't know, buying books in a foreign language is hard.