I couldn’t get enough of Buenos Aires and felt like we had to stay a second week to continue to explore. We wanted to wander through the Buenos Aires neighborhoods that spoke to us during our walking tours last week. In addition, we had time to slow down and book some future travel. Here’s my recap for our second week in Buenos Aires
Best Thing I Ate This Week
Chori Campero from Juan Bautista
San Telmo Market is the place where people come to enjoy delicious food and drinks from the many food stalls that line the interior of the building. Among them, Juan Bautista has a communal table and bar that looks into the small open kitchen. Here, you can see how they use the coal-fired grill and oven to cook the dishes.
We grabbed the last seats at the bar, having a front row show to the preparation of delicious meat sandwiches. Choripan is a popular sausage sandwich that can be found all over Argentina. However, this one stood out to me among the handful I have tried so far.
The mix of sauces, spread over the sourdough bread, complimented the flavor of the meat. I enjoyed an ice cold Imperial Lager with the sandwich. As soon as I had finished, an attentive server asked if I wanted another. I couldn’t refuse and they ended up giving it to me on the house, which capped off a delicious meal.
An Interesting Fact I Learned
Palacio Barolo and the Divine Comedy mystery
Luis Barolo came to Buenos Aires from Italy in 1890 and made a fortune in knitted fabrics. He was a big fan of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. As a result, he commissioned Mario Palanti to design a building as a tribute to it. The building has 22 floors that are divided into three sections. They represent hell, purgatory, and heaven that were traversed in the book. At the time of completion in 1923, it was the tallest building in South America. Today, it is still being used as an office building.
There are many other architectural references to the Divine Comedy throughout the building. The finishing piece to the lobby was a bronze statue of a condor elevating the body of Dante to paradise, custom built in Italy. However, when it arrived by boat, someone stole it at the dock, only to resurface recently in an art collection.
Palacio Barolo tried to get the statue back, unsuccessfully, because there was no proof it was the same work. When the collector died, it was once again stolen with the exception of the base of the statue. This was returned to Palacio Barolo. Some speculate that the statue contains the remains of Dante and this building tribute to his Divine Comedy is his final resting place.
My Travel Tip of the Week
Search for rental cars in spanish
In order to visit Peninsula Valdes without being limited to a tour schedule, you need to rent a car. In Argentina, like many places around the world, manual cars are much more common than automatic ones. While trying to secure a rental car for our weekend trip, all of the common international carriers were completely out of automatic cars.
As we started to give up hope that we would be able to do the trip, we decided to try searching for rental cars in Spanish. This brought up a handful of small regional companies that did not come up on the aggregator websites. Although we had to complete the process in Spanish, we successfully rented and paid for an automatic car for our weekend adventure with a little help from Google Translate for the more complex parts. The company we used from Puerto Madryn for the Valdes Peninsula was Rentar Low Cost.
The service was top of the line throughout the process, and one of their employees, Nacho, texted with us to ensure he was waiting at the airport when we landed. He gave us a great welcome to Atlantic Patagonia and made the pickup process seamless when we returned to the airport. Booking with Rentar Low Cost was one of the best rental experiences we have had across our travels.
My Additional Anecdote This Week
The Added Benefits of Taking Public Transportation
Public transportation is not always the fastest way to get from point A to B but it normally is the most economical. One of my favorite reasons for taking public transportation is that it makes me feel like I am truly getting to know a city and am a local temporarily. It helps me get better oriented to the different Buenos Aires neighborhoods. Utlimately, it gives me glimpses of the normal day to day that people live in that particular location.
Buenos Aires has an extensive bus system which we have been using to get around during our time here. On our first day in from the airport, we saw masses of Argentinian Police outside of the Asociacion del Futbol Argentino. They were prepared to welcome home the national team. We have witnessed a protest of young people, which closed down a full street and redirected our bus route. Finally, my favorite event was when we passed by the Obelisco and hundreds of kids were gathered in Spider Man clothing. We assumed it was for a Halloween gathering. We later found out that they ended up setting a record for the most Spider Man in one location with over 2000 people. You truly never know what you will see when winding through the streets of a new city.