day/night 1 -Buenos Aires!

hola!!! we're here!!! (after fran's boston college acoustics reunion-weekend and hanging out with lal and jas in nyc and chris and kendra on the road to and from boston...)

we checked in to our adorable little hotel this morning, "Posada de la Luna", in a honeymoon room with cute adornments and a beautiful open skylight in the middle of our ceiling. our main spot is in San Telmo, a historic district of Buenos Aires known for its bohemian character, tango in the streets, and antique boutiques. back in the day it used to be a more affluent town until the yellow fever epidemic scared the wealthy up north, so the buildings, including our posada, are beautiful old-style mansions that have been converted to apartments and commercial spaces on the bottom floor, makes really interesting and beautiful architecture.

we set afoot to explore this grid of a city, venturing throughout our san telmo barrio and checking out several shops and restaurants. we ate our first argentine meal - well, shannon's was, at least, fran's was italian - sorrentinos (like doughier, round ravioli stuffed with jamon y mozerella) in a to-die-for "san telmo" sauce of champignons, cherry tomatoes, cream and almonds. they make you pay for sauce extra. yum. the weather was cool and crisp (55-65F) so perfecto for sightseeing. there were a few museos we wanted to check out, but just our luck, we went when they were closed. :( after a nap, we ventured out again, this time to explore the microcentro (downtown) and find some cool bars and restaurants to eat (again). we have a feeling we will be writing a lot about the yummy food as we found a great cafe (cafe florida) on tucuman ave. and had the friendliest porteno waitress that helped us with our spanish and wished us felicidades on our honeymoon (luna de miel! :) ). after a brief brown-out (the city has them fairly often) eating our empanada and tarta in the dark, we ate a filet in mustard sauce with fried potato balls. so yummy. of course, we had an excellent argentine malbec from mendoza. after our late dinner (portenos eat very late, not uncommon for restaurants to be busy at midnight here), we continued to explore the avenues. there weren't too many people out and about as it was only a tuesday night, but there were many street vendors and stray dogs. then we tried to enter a milonga (community tango spot) but were not of garb so couldn't get in. oh well. another plan foiled. so we headed back to san telmo for a san rafael cognac and limoncello at the oldest bar, el federal. day 1 over. good day. need rest now...