Its June??

So June has descended upon BsAs, bringing with it cooler temperatures (the whole opposite hemisphere thing), my last month in Argentina and a shitload (well, two) visitors. The grand recap of the last two weeks is below and in the next post, but the short version is: La Cabrera, U2, San Isidro, Whiskey, U2, Tigre, La Cabrera.

Last Thursday my dad (hereafter just called "Gore") got into town for a quick six day visit. He rented an apartment in Recoleta and unless you are crashing with friends, dorming it at hostels or a crazy hotel points whore, renting a place is definitely the way to go (www.bytargentina.com.ar and www.buenosaireshabitat.com are two of the bazillion companies that do this). After settling in to his apartment I sent him on the obligatory (though excellent) bike tour then met up for dinner at Gran Bar Dazon. Its a really cool / upscale / trendy wine bar and restaurant (though its hard to imagine a wine bar that is not trendy), we sat at the bar, drank two bottles of wine and ate some good fusion-y chow.

Friday we hit up Campo Bravo in Las Canitas which is probably the best stereotypical Argentine steak house, the type of place you can get a really good steak and really good red wine for less than $15. We wandered around Canitas a bit, tried to ignore some annoying 50 year old American wearing an all denim outfit and arrived at the Matias about five minutes before the start of the U2 show. We think it was Bono's birthday, so the first set they played a whole bunch of stuff, some in English, some in Spanish and some in between, though no U2. Luckily, they made up for it in the 2nd set playing pretty much non-stop awesomeness. I'll let the video speak for itself.

Shocking as it may seem, got a bit of a late start to Saturday. Did the feria, went to the MALBA (pretty cool modern art museum), checked out the pallermo parques then checked out my couch.

Sunday we took the tren de la costa (overrated) out to Tigre, one of BsAs northern suburbs where the river spreads into a delta. Tigre in itself is a nice town and has a big market on the weekends, but the really cool stuff is out in the water. There are tons of little canals dotted with homes, restaurants, hotels, schools, etc, all complete with docks and boats since you don't need roads where we went (anybody?). You can take a river tour on a big boat, hire a river taxi to take you wherever or if you are really lucky (or unlucky) hitch a ride on the police wave runner. After the tour we took the regular train back to BsAs and then went to the greatest restaurant in town, La Cabrera (photo below). Three bottles of champagne, two steaks and 18 little side dishes equals one awesome dinner.

Monday Gore wandered around the city while I worked (what is wrong with that picture) then we went to a tango show at El Viejo Almacen. The tengo dancing was impressive, the tango band was great but I think the folky-indian band covering 'Hotel California' might have been the highlight of the show for me. Authentic.

Tuesday was Gore's last day so after checking out of his apartment we went for some 2x1 happy hour. Of course the cab came before the drinks did, so I was left with two frozen margaritas at a bar outside the cemetery. On the plus side, I learned that you can get drinks to go from bars here. Thanks for the visit Gore!