Argentina: Part 2

We had only one full day in BA. We had to fly home the next morning. So we got up, ate and headed out to see the famous cemetery where Eva Perone (Evita) is buried (dont cry for me Argentina!).

 The Church by the Recoleta

 Gorgeous stained glass window in the cemetery

We kind of had to make the trip to the cemetery short and sweet. It was not the most kid friendly activity and Curly girl was getting loud and bored. So we left and headed over to the HUGE open air market. Curly girl ran around like the maniac she is and climbed trees.

We walked around and husband found a guy making leather goods by hand. He got himself and his dad some belts. They are the most gorgeous color leather and buttery soft. I snapped a picture of the guy stamping the belt holes in the leather.....

We watched him work for a bit and then took the belts and kept on going. There were vendors selling everything you can think of. Husband wanted a mate cup. Mate is very popular tea here. It kind of looks like pot, but they drink it like crazy here. You drink it out of these special cups they make from hollowed gourds and these special straws that filter out the tea leaves. The tea is not finely ground like you find in tea bags. It is super coarse and almost chunky? I like the way it smells but its not my favorite tea. 

This is not the cup Husband picked out but they all kind of look the same. The straw gets SUPER HOT. Its metal which is not the most ideal material for a straw that you use in boiling water in my opinion. Anyway so got one of these puppies and then found a lady selling birds she made from the same gourds that they make Mate tea cups out of. We got 2 for Curly girl's room. I am going to figure out a way to hang them from the ceiling. 

Isnt he cute?? I just love them. They are so whimsical and charming. 

So anywho that was our day in BA. We ended the evening with a dinner out with our friends and their adorable 10 month old. The girls both enjoyed being up past bedtime and the food was fantastic. All in all we had a great time. I wish we could have stayed longer. The flight was less than 2 hours so I am sure we will go back. 

As far as the eye could see there was this distinct line of clouds where they just couldnt get up and over the mountains. It was so cool. The Andes are big! 

Argentina: Part 1

For Easter weekend we went to Buenos Aires. We went for one reason: Curly girl and I were technically still on tourist visas and we needed to leave the country and re enter on our new official visas. It also happens to be a cool city that we wanted to see ;) Our tourist visas expired 4 days after we got home from our trip. Nothing like waiting till the last minute.
Santiago is nestled right up against the Andes. Crossing them was truly an experience. The clouds cant even come over the mountains. I will share another picture of our return trip where you can see the line of clouds that just cant make it up and over the mountains. It was bizarre!

Husband took this shot as we crossed over the tallest point. Quite the view.
So we got to Argentina right at Curly girl's bedtime-not ideal. But our hotel had 2 bedrooms and a sitting area so we whisked her off to bed and our friends that live in Buenos Aires came over with some tasty, tasty take out (read: STEAK) and we cracked open a bottle of malbec and caught up. This steak may have been the best steak I had ever had. If you are a steak lover, Argentina is the place for you. You cannot go there and not eat steak. The malbec was good. It was fine but it has nothing on Chilean red wine. We stayed at the Trianon apart hotels. If you go to Buenos Aires and you have small children this is right where you want to be. It is in Recoleta, close to tons of places to eat, has free breakfast in the mornings, has 2 bedrooms, a sitting area, a kitchen and 2 bathrooms. Magic basically.

communism in the kitchen

Everything in this apartment came with a learning curve. The washing machine, dryer, microwave and oven are all in Spanish. If I had a dishwasher it would be in Spanish too. My remote controls for the TV are in Spanish. And clearly I knew it would all be in Spanish. But knowing and understanding are two different things. I knew the washing machine would be in Spanish, but I didnt really understand what that would mean. It meant sticky notes everywhere so I didnt ruin clothes. I can happily report those sticky notes are now gone. I have also conquered the microwave and the remote controls. But the oven still gets me. Because not only is it TINY (I have to buy easy bake oven sized pans since my giant sized ones from the States dont fit. But the 13x9 pyrex does fit so all is not lost) but it is also in Celsius. Oh Celsius.
Last week Curly girl wanted to bake cookies. Bake with your kids they said, it will be fun they said. The following steps had to be taken in order to make said cookies.

1. I had to unplug the desktop computer from the transformer and move the transformer to the kitchen where my Kitchen Aid is. God bless a Kitchen Aid mixer, am I right?
2. Convert grams to tablespoons to cups. I am not a math person. I am going to buy a food scale. The butter here is marked in grams not tbsp and sometimes not marked at all!
3. Do more math to figure out what temp to set the oven. You win again Celsius. When I cook dinner I kind of just wing it in the temperature department because I cannot be expected to do math at 5:30 pm, but I figured this is baking. Be precise, Joanna.
4. Vacuum pantry because spices are sold in bags here and inevitably the baking soda spilled everywhere.
5. Locate muffin tin because my cookie sheets dont fit in the oven.

But good news the semi muffin shaped cookies turned out pretty good! If I were more intelligent I would have written down the answers to the 5 problems above and filed it away for the next time, but you know I didn't.
End of story: the metric system sucks. So do spices not sold in containers with lids that either screw on or snap shut.