Day 5 - Goth life

Looking grave (excuse the terrible pun)

Morning of day 5, we finally caved in and decided to check out the massive tourist-trap that is Cafe Tortoni. This famous Buenos Aires institution, former hangout of artists and writers such as Borges, has been at it's present location for over 130 years. To quote Jeremy, it was “the fanciest cafe we’ve ever been in”. The interior was atmospheric, and the food and coffee average and overpriced. However, we enjoyed hanging out here for a bit, basking in the glow of fanciness.

Pinkies out!


Guess it costs a lot to keep all these lamps running…

Satisfied that we had now absorbed enough class from our surroundings, we headed off to Recoleta once again to check out the historical cemetery. Founded in 1822, this cemetery houses over 4500 tombs, including the final resting places of a huge number of politicians, writers, musicians, actors, etc . My inner goth was overjoyed, despite the fact that we were wearing the least goth outfits we own that day (can’t handle black when out and about all day in the sun). We spent at least a couple of hours wandering amongst the mausolea, which ranged from palatial monuments topped with huge statues to smaller crypts crumbling into ruin. For people who supposedly care little for the material realm after the departure of the spirit, the Catholic are sure into housing their corporeal forms in splendour. Most of the tombs seemed to hold entire families, with stairs in the floor leading to subterranean corpse-storage. An amazing level of attention to detail was on display, from the intricate stained glass set into walls and ceilings, to the craftsmanship of coffins that remain intact after decades, and in some cases, over a century. A number of the vaults carry recent dates, and I even noticed fresh roses, still dewey, left on the gating of one.

Rows upon rows of vaults


No one gives me these, even when I'm alive *cries*


Not so much "pace" around when there are so many tourists walking over the top of you...


Outfit goth level: 0


I have never lived with such a pretty roof over my head


Mourning the death of good architecture (see apartment block in background)

The best part of the cemetery: cemetery cats (of course)

Jesus bonus for extra XP: There was a large Spanish-style building next to the cemetery. This housed a church dating back to the 1730s.

So old, so Jesus

For the evening, we splurged on one of the dinner + tango shows ubiquitously touted all over the city, in order to experience one of the main cultural institutions of Buenos Aires. Apparently some of these are of a much better quality than others. I chose to go with Complejo Tango, as this one came with a free tango lesson for absolute n00bs before dinner, and I love to humiliate both myself and Jeremy with trying out activities we’re both terrible at. Armed with my reassurance that tango was “just walking rhythmically like a really fancy person”, we proceeded to butcher the art of tango along with the rest of a room full of largely useless dancers. This worked up our appetites for the three course meal to follow, which included a steak cooked to perfection. Fortunately, the professional dancers providing the rest of the entertainment were astronomically more skilled than we, and put on a fantastic show tracing the art of tango from its origins in the slum bordellos of Buenos Aires to its modern conception. The costumes were glittery, the instrumental accompaniment was skilled, the steps were precise, and them leg flicks were off the chain. To my delight, Jeremy was doubly targeted by both the singer who decided to serenade him, and one of the fancy dancing ladies who asked him for a dance.

Look at that Jeremy pose

Days 3 and 4 - defeated by pizza and art

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

Day 2 - jetlag is the worst

Observations made in the last 24 hours:

• Porteños (people of Buenos Aires), including the children next door don't seem to go to bed until loooong after midnight
• There are less Hitler clones than Jeremy led me to believe. Guess the efflux from Brazil hasn't happened. 
• 90% of everything is pizza

Things I haven't figured out yet:

• Where to buy a damn vegetable
• Why my sense of direction is non-existent even when the streets are laid out in perfect grid formats with 100m between each block
• How to communicate (in Spanish, and in general)

In order to try to level up our orientation skills and also learn about the city, we did a "free" (tip the guide a self-elected amount) 3 hour walking tour of the central city. Our guide Victoria was great, and we learnt some very useful information about how to get around without getting totally lost, as well as a concise overview of the last 200 years of Argentinian politics. Turns out we really have a knack of picking holiday spots which have had really fucked up political situations in its recent history. On a lighter note, much squeeing over cute buildings.

Palacio del Congresso - fancy schmancy congress building. Apparently the only person who can enter through the front door is el presidente, whereas the rest of the plebs go in through the sides


Moustache man! First socialist member of parliament in the Americas. Everyone knows that the left wing has the best facial hair.


One of three originals of Rodin's "Thinker" sculptures, chilling out in the park, having a ponder


People here are really into Eva Perón. REALLY into her. I need to watch that Madonna musical to brush up on my knowledge (because artistic license > historical accuracy, clearly)


So pink! The Casa Rosada, where the president hangs out, is supposedly pink because the original paint used when it was first built had cows blood and fat mixed into it to make it longer-lasting.


These dudes walk from the pink building to the nearby church every 2 hours, to guard the tomb of Saint Martín

After the walk, we wandered about looking for somewhere to have lunch. Bereft of our guide, we were extremely bewildered, and even more so once we sat down and tried to decipher the menu and also figure out how the hell things like cover charges and tipping worked. We eventually managed to order a couple of set meals - spaghetti, huuuuuge glass of wine (filled to the brim, none of this only to the mark 1/3 way up the glass bullshit), and a shot of limoncello for $8 AUD for me, and an empanada, 1/4 of a Portuguese chicken, dessert, big mug of beer and shot of limoncello for $11 AUD for Jeremy. The wine consumption coupled with my jetlag meant that trying to work out tipping was pretty much impossible, and we ended up just giving them a random amount of money and running away. The fact that they didn't chase us down the street meant that we probably got it right.

The waiter asked us something along the lines of "cream or dulce de leche with your flan?". My brain froze up and the only thing I could remember was "Por que no los dos" from the Old El Paso ads. Good job, brain!

We got a bit lost and ended up walking for a good half-hour trying to find our way home again (in reality, it was only about 2 blocks away), after which the trauma + heat + intoxication + jetlag meant that we had to siesta for about 3 hours to regain our sanity. The evening was spent navigating to a bank that wouldn't charge me $10 every time I wanted to take out money (which is pretty often in a country where the daily withdrawal limit is about $170 AUD), and looking for a dinner that would include some sort of plant matter. We settled for a cheap pay-by-weight takeaway place a couple of blocks away (hooray for salad!). I spent the evening reviewing the (few) photos I'd taken during the day - I'm too paranoid to bust out my camera in the open most of the time, as apparently muggers and pickpockets are a big thing here. Nevertheless, here are some bonus shots of cute balconies.

Day 1 - ¡Hola, Buenos Aires!

Apologies in advance for the shitty quality photos in this post. Turns out doing anything productive with an iPad is a pain in the ass. Will try and fix this for later posts in the coming days.

We have made it to Buenos Aires and are safely ensconced in our Airbnb! After several days of vague panic, we somehow managed to pack a bunch of crap at the last minute (only time will tell whether we packed wisely or not), get Jeremy to the doctors about 4 hours before our flight (he's somewhat ill at the moment), and get our butts on a plane on time.

After many hours of wrestling, I somehow managed to condense what are supposedly all my necessities for the next 8-12 months of travel into a 11.5kg pack and small backpack. I guess I'll have to put myself on a total buying ban if I want to continue being able to fit all my stuff in my pack.

This comprises roughly half of my worldly possessions... scary...

At least all our transport was relatively non-stressful - the 11.5 hour flight over was no more or less shit than anticipated, customs was super chilled, and despite us spending ages puzzling over the confusing customs declaration form, they ushered us through without even asking for the form. We managed to make it to our Airbnb in one piece, and attempted to become human again via showers and watching Adventure Time in Spanish.

As if this show wasn't mental enough without the added language barrier & intense Mexian-accented Princess bubblegum

View of the street from our apartment. We are pretty central in the CBD, from what I've gathered using my poor navigational and spatial awareness skills

So many buildings have cute balconies! This one across from us is only mildly cute.

Our home for the next week - the "before" shot.

After a couple of hours of pottering about, we went our on our first wander around the streets of Buenos Aires in a quest to find an ATM. We wandered past some pretty awesome looking buildings, but in my exhaustion-induced paranoia, I didn't take my camera to take photos with... that will have to wait until tomorrow!

In case we get kidnapped or lost or are too busy to be online for the next while, please our plans for the next few weeks are as follows, in case any friends and family need a starting point with which to seek vengeance and/or send a search party:
- Chill out in Buenos Aires for a week, eat lots of steak and pizza
- Fly out to El Calafate in Argentinian Patagonia next Monday, where we will hike around in the mountains for a week and a half
- Spend another week in Buenos Aires, more gluttony
- Fly out to Salta in the north of Argentina. Wing it from here on.

I'll try to write a post every day or 2, but we all know what a slacker I am. Until then, ¡adiós!

Middle Earth

My slackness when it comes to blogging is so phenomenal, even I have trouble comprehending it. Will try better. Will likely fail.

On my most recent trip to NZ, I went and did dorky touristy things in a dorky touristy fashion with my family. Here are some snaps from our Hobbiton visit, where my dorky sister and I frolicked around with nerdish glee while mum despaired and reflected on a wasted lifetime of raising such dorky spawn*.

I don't think I've ever spoken to any Kiwis who have actually been to this tourist-trap of an ex-movie set, whereas people from everywhere else usually seem astonished that not everyone in NZ lives in a hole in the side of a hill (if I could, I would). I'm such a sucker for things like this though.

Here's a delightful scene of domestic life in the Shire. Unfortunately, our hairy feet are concealed by footware.

I had to edit the water and sky to make it LESS distractingly blue in these photos. Seriously, NZ, stop being so pretty and stuff already or I might have to move back and change my name to Bilbo or something.

And what better way to end a tour than with a drink in the Green Dragon Inn (which they set on fire for the first film and later reconstructed)

* just kidding, mum like it too, especially the immaculately curated vegetable garden.

P.S. This is what happens when you ask my mum to take a photo, and make sure to get the entirety of our heights plus the giant beer barrel in, in the centre of the frame >_<

Photos taken at Hobbiton, Matamata in January 2016.

Music I've been into lately

I started writing a post for this months ago (featuring depressing winter music) but as one would expect, what I've been listening to has changed since then. Here are half a dozen artists/bands/songs I've been smashing lately during this weird in-between hot-cold-rain-drought summer (alphabetised according to Artist name). I guess my taste is always somewhat dark-ish but there's a bit of a mix of genres etc*

A Place to Bury Strangers - To Fix the Gash in Your Head

So I've been real shit at keeping my to date with music and stuff for at least half a decade or something, I can't believe I hadn't listened to these guys since recently (and as a consequence, missed their Sydney gig earlier this year). No surprise why I like these guys - noisy-as dance-able post-punk with distortion on distortion. That noise. My ears are pretty much never happy unless they feel like they've been strained through a grater. Jokes aside though, these guys are pretty sweet. And I have a strange fixation with drum machines.

Abbe May - Karmageddon

We randomly stumbled upon this badass lady from Perth one bored evening when searching for a gig to go to. She was fantastic live, juggling vocals, guitar and a drum machine with the intermittent help of a guy on saxophone and a sheep skull. Interesting mix of electronic elements with a dark blues rock-influenced songwriting style (especially evident in some of her older stuff, I think). I vaguely remember one of her songs mentioning kicking out her old drummer and replacing them with a drum machine because they didn't believe she had it in her to make it as a musician - and to that, I say a big "fuck yeah!"

Florence and the Machine - Cosmic Love

Spent a night last month dancing in the rain to sweet tunes while Florence Welch pranced around the stage like a possessed elf. It was fantastic. She was a fantastic performer, and really brought this song to life  in a way that even this melodramatic music video can't. Before the song, she told a story about how she wrote this song while in the throes of one of the worst hangovers of her life. This song is one of the most beautiful takes on the pain of being in love, and makes me feel ashamed about my hangovers in comparison, where my productivity generally comes in the form of puke.

Goat - Hide From the Sun

Saw these guys live a couple of days ago. It was amazing. I don't even have the words to describe. Who can say no to a weird masked psychedelic Swedish artists' collective led by a guy called Mr Goatman who is supposedly a member of a commune under a voodoo curse?

Sleater-Kinney - New Wave

Combining two of my loves - Bob's Burgers and riot grrrl! And soon to be joined by another one of my loves (hi Melissa!), who I'm going to see these guys with in Feb (reliving our teenage BDO days haha). So much excite! Admittedly, it's been years since I've given these guys a proper listen, so I've been dusting off (digital) albums I haven't listened to much since high school, as well as giving their new album a spin. The only thing that disappoints about their new stuff is that it has much less of Corin's banshee screeching, which I felt gave their angrier stuff more sense of urgency.

Anyway, five is enough for now.

*Who am I kidding? I only ever listen to alt rock >_<

Crappy and out of date

Wow I'm shit at this blogging thing. Here's what I've been up to in the 1.5 months since my last post:

- Got over shitty cold #1 and had less than a month of not resembling a huge mucus-trailing slug before being felled by another shitty cold. Am currently on 2nd week of slithering around feebly, trailing sputum in my slimy wake

- My tomatoes have blown up into a crazy tomato jungle and I don't really know what to do with them

- Periodically overfeeding a box of worms

- Started Spanish lessons (because failing at 2 languages is just not quite enough)

- Entered a Mario Kart 64 tournament and failed due to drunkenness

- Presented a poster at a conference, also going to another 2 conferences this month ('tis the season?)

- So much dentistry. I don't even want a mouth any more