Given my brother’s ability to quickly pick up foreign languages and the adventurous spirit that once brought my sister to New Zealand and keeps her moving into a new apartment every 6 months, I might have been the Lear voted least likely to travel the world. However, life works in mysterious ways, and I’ve turned into the Lear that’s now spent over a year of her life outside of the USA.
We’ve received more than a few visitors during our trip but there was none as anticipated (for me) as my brother coming to meet us in Buenos Aires for his first international trip (Canada doesn’t count) and my first immediate family member to ever visit me abroad. He was joined by his girlfriend Mandi whose Spanish from her previous travels in Mexico came in handy, especially during their multiple customs stops.
Lucky for us, one of Ryan’s theater friends, Dario, is a Porteño (a “Buenos Airean”) with the most generous family on the planet. If any of you have enjoyed the hospitality of our parents you’ll understand why we referred to Dario’s folks, Martha and Oscar, as the Argentinian Barb and Ken. Their home is your home and somehow they anticipate your every need including those you didn’t even know you had.
I’m a firm believer of the travel philosophy that the people you meet shape your experience more than the place itself. In this case, we met the most amazing people in the most amazing place and it was a recipe for very memorable trip.
The generosity didn’t stop at Dario and his folks; it continued through the blood line to his sister, Cynthia. Envision yourself in this scenario: Your brother’s friend who you’ve never met is visiting your hometown for 10 days with his family. Do you….
A. Go about your daily life as usual.
B. Politely say hello when you run into them at your parents’ house.
C. Take time off from work to drive them around your city sharing your wealth of fun facts, dine with them until 2am even though you have to wake up at 6am, host them for a traditional Argentine-style BBQ (asado), answer countless emails and texts, and basically attempt to make all their dreams come true.
You’d like to believe that you’d be as kind a soul as Cynthia and choose option “C”, but would that really be true? The Tangelson’s earned “Saint” status with us during our visit.
Our first night we caught up at a bar over a Quilmes beer (an Argentine treasure) and then came home to ask Martha to recommend a restaurant. She marched to the kitchen and taught us to cook the traditional Argentine dish Milanasa at 11pm in her nightgown. Martha to the rescue! When we woke up the next morning to a fresh pot of hot coffee and a dining table set full of breakfast goodies we realized “Martha’s rescue missions” would become a theme throughout our stay with the Tangelsons.
Our first full day was appropriately dedicated to the beloved former first-lady, Eva “Evita” Peron. Countless minutes of research were committed to all things Eva in preparation for this big day. Ryan and Mandi watched Evita the movie starring Madonna, and I read a wikipedia overview and relayed it to Marea. Mandi might have been a bit of a fan, so she plotted out BA’s Eva hotspots.
The tour started at Eva’s family tomb in the awe-inspiring Recoleta Cemetery. Ryan was certain that his increasing desire to sing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” was proof that we were approaching Eva’s tomb but by his 5th performance, we were growing skeptical. Luckily, we managed to find it and have a couple moments semi-alone for photos and a few Mandi tears. To be fair to Mandi, Recoleta Cemetery was a very powerful place– surrounded by so much history and impressive family tombs towering over you.
We followed that up with a visit to a museum solely dedicated to the life of Eva Peron. A few souvenirs and tears later, we took a stroll through a nearby park in the Palermo neighborhood where Ryan, our professional photographer, was told for the first of many times throughout the trip to put his camera away or he would be killed for it. Thinking this a bit overdramatic, he still heeded the unsolicited advice not wanting his first international trip to end in death.
Our stroll led us to a planetarium just in time for sunset. Ryan, being an astrology buff, was stoked to check it out but we were disappointed to find out it was closed for a private film festival. Bummer.
We lingered outside the planetarium deciding our next move when a guy offered to sell us his festival tickets. We thanked him but explained we were low on cash and probably wouldn’t understand the Spanish at which point he gave us the tickets for FREE, noting that the film was music and visual based only. Travel luck struck again!! The icing on the cake– the film was about Tango in Buenos Aires shown in a 360 view on the planetarium ceiling. It was a great way to end our first full day and we were excited what the rest of this city had in store for us.
The next day Saint Cynthia took us on a personalized tour of the city center jam packed with fun facts such as:
-The best places to eat churros (Tortoni), a delicious carmel-filled cookie sandwich called alfajores (Havanna), and Argentine-style pizza.
-The tomb of national hero and liberator General San Martin is in the Catedral Metropolitana, but since he was actually a Mason and not a Catholic, the church insisted on building a separate room that is attached but not technically inside the cathedral
-Despite our enthusiasm, even Argentines don’t drink Quilmes.
We did manage to leave the safety of the Tangelson’s to take a 3 day journey to Buenos Aires’s neighboring country, Uruguay. We took a ferry across the Rio de la Plata over to the tiny village of Colonia del Sacramento for our first stop. It was a quaint place where walking everywhere was easy, the views of the water were spectacular, and the yerba was flowing.
We didn’t realize how obsessed the Uruguaians were with yerba mate until we returned to Buenos Aires and mentioned it. Porteños agreed that the traditional drink was lovely to share amongst friends but that Uruguaian’s took it a bit too far. Even the local newscasters on a morning show sipped it during their segments.
After Colonia, we took a bus to the capital, Montevideo, where we found more yerba and a really cool looking city. The architecture is a mix of art deco and colonial. Marea picked out a potential forever home for us in an old building that looked like a spaceship, then, we strolled through the historic part of the city and rented bikes to enjoy the coastal landscape.
You’d think with the setting I’d be able to hit one out of the park for Marea’s birthday but we somehow managed to spend it with a 4 am wakeup call to catch our ferry back to Buenos Aires, a celebratory birthday nap and a chill, birthday evening playing birthday cards while drinking birthday yerba. (With our wedding prep overshadowing last year’s birthday, and exhaustion taking over this year’s birthday… I might need to step up next year’s celebration. Thankfully, she’s a very forgiving and easy to please wife. Have I mentioned how lucky I am!?!)
Rested up, we took off the next day to the nearby town of El Tigre to check out the river boats and giant artisan market. Oscar spent much of the previous evening researching directions to ensure we didn’t get lost on our way and then personally dropped us off at the train station 6 blocks from their house. We weren’t quite sure why Oscar seemed so nervous about us getting lost all the time until I answered someone’s question at the train station:
“De donde van?” the friendly stranger asked.
“Los Estados Unidos!” I exclaimed as I whizzed by him looking for the ticket office.
A few steps later, I realized my Spanish mistake number gazillion…. The guy had asked where we were going because we looked lost and I had answered him confidently with “The United States”. I was starting to understand what Oscar must have seen in us all this time.
Lluvia (rain), unfortunately, interrupted our nice day trip to El Tigre but we salvaged it with the scenic train ride along the river, an awesome lunch at “Boulevard Saenz Peña” and a visit to the Mate Museum. This additional education only encouraged the mate fever that we had caught in Uruguay and we spent the rest of our vacation in search of the perfect mate gourd(s) to purchase.
Back at the bar near our house, we escaped the pouring rain with “uno mas Quilmes” leaving us a little buzzed when we received the text from Cynthia informing us that her friend was hosting a Tango show at her house at that very moment. The majority of Tango shows in BA are extremely touristy, so we didn’t want to miss this opportunity to get a more authentic version in an intimate setting.
After a frantic run in the rain and a taxi ride, we arrived a mere hour late and rang the buzzer for five minutes, thinking she couldn’t hear us over the music. We finally got a response:
“Ummmm, hi! It’s tomorrow night, sorry.”
Embarrassed for the number of times we rang her bell at 11pm, we slunk away sheepishly. Cynthia apologized profusely, but nothing she said or did would ever demote her from her “Saint” status with us. We were proud we had tried and didn’t let the rain defeat us. A win in our books!
The trip felt too short (unlike this post), and our last day snuck up on us too quickly. We weren’t ready for this crazy, fun foursome to be split up. The day was dedicated to doing a little of all our favorite things; drinking mate with Cynthia, eating our Havanna alfajores, another stop to Casa Rosada, walking the streets for final Evita paraphernalia and mates gourds, and drinking beer. Cynthia and her husband spoiled us with a going away/birthday asado (BBQ) that night at their home for the perfect ending to a great trip.
The Traveling Blues 