Buenes Aires (Tues 3/16)

Stats:
- 2 gringos eat dessert for breakfast
- 1 long flight
- 1 haircut

This dessert for breakfast thing beats bad toast. Arn considered the eggs, but the eggs are seriously under-scrambled. So when desperate, they work. But today, we stuck with cookies, bars and cakes. 

This was our first trip to an airport since leaving the U.S. on Jan 22nd. The "in country rules" were pretty lax --- leave your shoes on, don't pull out any laptops, and carry as much liquid and gel as you like. While in line, a young couple asked, "Are you from Seattle?" They are from Seattle as well and claimed our numerous REI logos gave us away. It was my pants and my traveling duffle bag. Go figure.

Despite it feeling like a long flight that would never end and the fact that the women next to me sounded like she was dying from the flu (more on this next week when I feel the same way), I was glad to be getting out of the wind and cold. 

Our landing in Buenes Aires was a rough smack to the ground. Even Arn said, "Wow, that was a hard landing". I explained it to him -- "You see, this pilot is used the wind in Patagonia. He normally has to gun it to get to the ground through the head wind".  We both laughed at this as it is probably true. 

Our hotel in BA (Buenes Aires) is a super modern place. The room has the biggest bed we have ever seen. We have CNN in English (I have yet to run all the other channels to check my options).  The tables and chairs and other furniture items look like something out of Italian design catalog.  Breakfast is included for the price of $100 per night. This seems like a good deal. 

After arriving, Arn went out for a run. Not understanding the neighborhood safety for a woman alone, I decided to walk/run laps in the stairwell rather than go for a walk. There are nine stories of stairs and I do this at home in Seattle, so it beats looking for a gym. At least this stairwell has a skylight at the top and if I move fast enough, the motion sensitive lights stay turned on. 

After showers, we took to the streets for a walk. Arn found a place to get his hair cut. You need to imagine a place that looked the inside of the barber shop on the Andy Griffith Show....same chair, same mirror, guy dressed in the same smock with the same patch pockets. He even used a straight edge razor over Arn's ears. Arn had to remove his glasses and once the guy got started, Arn put his glasses back on to check the length. He asked me, "Do you think that's too short?" I had to laugh. I explained, "It doesn't matter now. He has to make it all match, so go with it". It is not a bad haircut. 

We wanted a homerun experience for dinner and chose a sure bet -- Astrid y Gaston. It is Peruvian food. We've been to one in Santiago and Quito. And, we have been to the sister restaurant, La Mar, in San Francisco and Santiago. In a word, it was awesome!  We started with a very fine PIsco Sour. We shared a selection of "causas" --- mashed sweet potato base topped with crab, octopus, or shrimp and intense sauces. Arn had salmon and I had merluza (hake).  It was out of this world. For dessert, we did a "tiramisu unplugged" thing. It was the components of tiramisu, but not put together. It was okay. We had a nice white wine (for a change). It was a torrontes.  The whole dinner was a great experience --- service, atmosphere, food, and drinks. It will be hard to top this!