Two minor achievements from day 3: we found a good bank only 1 block away from us instead of 10 blocks, and we managed to buy Sube cards for public transport (with the help of 2 very nice guys who happened to speak English in the que behind us). Armed with our new subway utilisation skills, we made our way to San Telmo and spent a couple of hours aimlessly wandering the cobblestoned streets and looking at the many many antiques stores in the area while pondering over whether it was feasible to mail Jeremy's mum a giant chandelier. I guess Argentina going from being one of the richest countries in the world to one of relative economic deprivation within the time of a few decades meant that there was a huge amount of pawning off of fancy furniture and other household goods. We stopped off at a small cafe for lunch and after a long moment of awkwardly pretending to know what the waitress was saying to us, it turned out that another guy working there knew English and explained the menu (turns out my Spanish is far far worse than I feared, even after lessons). We got some amazing roast beef thing, and while I made sure to get vegetables on the side, Jeremy panicked and defaulted to potatoes, a move which he will one day regret when he gets scurvy because non-starch-based, non-pizza vegetables are hard to find.
Why is this building so adorable?
I want to eat this again... but we'll probably never find this place again because we were somewhat lost when we found it.
After lunch, we had a wander around the Museo de Arte Moderno. I don't get Art at all, but Berni is pretty cool. There also happened to be a Picasso exhibition on, which was cool because he is my homeboy (i.e. All faces I try to draw end up extremely lop-sided).
Hmmm....
Hey look, it's me
For the evening, we ventured down to what is supposedly the best pizza place in Buenos Aires. A terrible mistake was made, by which I mean we ordered a large instead of a small. I mind-blanked and couldn't remember how to ask for our leftovers as take-away, so the only non-awkward thing we could come up with was to force ourselves to eat the whole damn thing. It was good pizza, but there's only so much volume of cheese one can deal with. That was probably the closest point I came to dying in the 27 short years of my life.
The pizza. It's bigger than Jeremy.
I was still cheese-stuffed the next morning, when we set out pretending we were cultured and stuff in order to ogle at some fancy buildings. We splurged on tickets for the guided tour in English at the Teatro Colón, which is ranked 3rd best opera house in the world by National Geogaphic (ahead of Sydney, at #6!). As we had over an hour to wait for the tour, we headed over to the Galerías Pacífico shopping mall to confirm whether it was a ridiculous as reports suggested. It was.
WTF even is this place?!?! How and why is this in a shopping mall?!
With more time to kill, we went to commit some voyeurism at the nearby Catedral Metropolitana, otherwise known as the current pope's old stomping ground. I may be an atheist, but I sure love me a good old church. It was pretty obvious which members of the crowd assembled inside were Catholic and which were there to gawk like us (hint: only 1 group was really into kissing the feet of all the Jesuses. There sure was a lot of Jesus.
So much gold. So much Jesus.
Jesus kindly reminded us that we were now running a bit late for our tour, so we spent the next 15 minutes tearing down the street back to the theatre (no mean feat in 30+ degree heat) and tried not to act like we were too sweaty and disgusting to be in such a magnificent building. Long story short, the building was magical and tour worth paying for, as it's currently between seasons at the theatre and thus there is no other way to get inside.
The Teatro Colón is freaking huge and takes up an entire block
The concert hall has 7 levels, plus these weird boxes hidden halfway in the floor and covered in mesh grating so that society widows back in the day who weren't meant to be out in public could go unseen to the opera
Ceiling! Apparently hidden panels around the chandelier can hide 11 people for sound-effects purposes
So shiny!
The original plan for the afternoon was to join the 5pm free walking tour of Recoleta. Unfortunately, we were defeated by my lack of ability to follow instructions or read maps, and we spend a good 20 minutes wandering around without encountering the tour guide. However, luck was on our side as we ended up wandering past the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which has no entry charge (cheapskate Katharine rejoices!). More art viewing happened, until we could art no more. There is only so much arting I can handle at one time, and the gallery's collection was pretty impressive.
Such art
This painting of people drinking under a bridge really spoke to Jeremy
This thing of potatoes really spoke to Jeremy because potatoes
After recovering from all the art, we headed to dinner at a cute little restaurant just across the road from us. Review: excellent wine, nice dim lighting, we got these things which were like amazing pies. I managed to ask if we could take away left overs, and thus am levelling up every day.
PIE!
No bonus cute balconies for today. Every 2nd balcony is cute so I've given up taking photos. Here is cute tree in middle of huge road instead
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