Buenos Aires is like an onion with layer upon layer of fun
things to do - you just need to know how to peel it. Here are four
things I recommend giving a go...
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1. Eating at a closed-door restaurant
The beauty of dining at a closed-door restaurant is that you get
the intimacy of a dinner party without the hours of preparation and
mountain of washing up at the end of the night. Chef, Dan Perlman
and his partner Henry invite 12 dinner party guests to Casa
Saltshaker, their cozy, one bedroom duplex in
Recoleta on Friday and Saturday evenings each week.
Half the fun is not knowing know who you'll be sitting next to
and the other half is letting your tastebuds ride on a ferris wheel
of fancy new flavours. The food is served as a creative 5-course
tasting menu and each dish is paired with a specially selected
wine. I went on Friday and as the wine flowed, so too did the
conversation with my new dining buddies. It began at 9pm and
finished up around midnight, at which point we kicked on to a wine
bar down the road. Here is the menu from Friday night:
Salad: Ensalada Olivier (traditional
quail egg and potato salad recipe from the
1800s)
Soup: Gazpacho de
mango (Cold tomato soup with yellow peppers, mango and
chili)
Entree: Panqueque
saraceno, sugo de championed (Buckwheat pancake, ricotta and
mushrooms)
Main: Pollo picante, polenta de quinoa (Chicken with
quinoa polenta)
Dessert: Helado de risotto, fruitillas y higo
(Risotto icecream, figs, strawberries and pink
peppercorn.)
A sparkling, a white, a rose, a red
and a sweet wine were paired to each course to create the perfect
food, wine marriage.
Check out more snaps of the evening here: /galleries/gallery.aspx?id=3087#11
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2. Going on a photography treasure hunt
The first few days in BA I was incredibly trigger happy on my
camera, it seemed everywhere I looked there was an amazing scene
that needed to be captured. But what is the difference between
recording the moment and creating a photographic piece of art? The
lovely ladies at Foto Ruta run a photography workshop in
different neighbourhoods in BA to teach you just that. We met at a
cafe Nucha in Recoleta where we were put into teams and given 10
photo assignments.
The idea is that you get 10 clues, for example: 'jobless and
wealthy' and then you interpret that clue in one photograph. (See
santa above.) Expat duo Joss and Becky gave us a crash course in
the basic principles to consider when composing a shot and then we
were off.
We returned 2 hours later with 10 photos per group and over a
glass of wine we watched a slideshow of the best photographs. It
was so interesting seeing different interpretations of the same
clue and I felt myself begin the transition from point-and-shoot to
a more conceptual photographer. (The clue for the monkey shot of me
in the tree was 'bridge the gap'). Whether you're shooting on an
iphone or a big SLR, Foto Ruta gives tourists a unique way to
experience Buenos Aires and teaches skills that can be put into
practice in all of your travel photography.
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3. Cycling where jaguars used to roam
Buenos Aires is a beautiful city but sometimes the pace gets a
bit hectic for me. If you're craving a lungful of
fresh air a great option is to vist the Tigre Delta by bike. To
avoid the madness of the city traffic we took our bikes on the
train for only 1.25 and got off at La Lucilia and cycled through
the burbs down to the water. We saw a lot of stencil street art by
an artist called Alex Lange and a whole series of stencils of giant
elephants.
The view looking back to the city was my first glimpse of the
Buenos Aires skyline. Our bikeit guide, Chiara showed us photos of local
wildlife and maps of the area, explaining why the sediment makes
the water so dirty looking. We noticed a young boy running between
cones and his bootcamp father yelling instructions at him. The kid
was clearly not happy and eventually he ended up vomiting into the
river, adding to the murky liquid already in there.
We carried on to San Fernando and then to Tigre - a small port
city until the beginning of the 20th century, when it became a
poplular city escape for porteños. It's named after the
tigres (jaguars) that inhabited the delta until they were
hunted to extinction. (See a pic of them here.) The port is a great spot to stop for
lunch, do some shopping at the markets and watch the boats
unloading wood carried down from the Delta. We took the touristic
route along the river to check out the stunning art museum and I
got told off twice by the security guard, first for riding, then
for sitting. Then we caught the one hour train back to BA. It was a
great day out, Chiara from bikeit was a fountain of knowledge and
enthusiasm and I'm glad I went on a weekday as I hear it gets
pretty packed on the weekends.
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4. Drinking Malbec on stage in a theatre
Imagine a gorgeous old theatre that has been restored to it's
original glory and now imagine it's full of books. That's El
Ateneo, a worthy recipient of the number 2 spot on The Guardian's
list of the world's best bookshops. What was once the
Teatro Gran Splendid on Avenida Santa Fe is now the home of a
forest of books, the stage is a cafe and you can sit in the private
theatre booths and read until your heart's content.
I met a friend there and enjoyed a glass of local Malbec on the
stage and listened as a classical pianist let his fingers dance
along the grand piano keys. I couldn't find many books in English
so settled for a children's farm animal book. It was the
appropriate reading level for this clueless gringo and probably the
first time someone has drunk red wine while learning the Spanish
word for sheep. (Oveja
if you're wondering.)