Lazy summer days

This is kind of a different vacation for us. Buenos Aires is a typical city vacation, but it's a city without a lot of famous sights or historical landmarks. So far our highlight has been eating dinner and marvelling at how much cheaper an equal meal would be in NYC. The steaks here are so big that Bryan can't even finish his meal and has been bringing the extra home and cooking steak and eggs for breakfast.

A note about subways. The subway system here is pretty easy to navigate, and cheap (about .30/ride). However, they don't really run to any of the neighborhoods worth visiting. So to use the subway, you usually have about a 20-minute walk to get to your destination. They also aren't air-conditioned. So as usual, we've been doing a lot of walking, and then usually taking a cab back. The city has an extensive bus system, but the buses require coins and we have yet to find a bus map anywhere. Yesterday we walked through the neighborhood of Recoleta and visited a cemetery with many above-ground vaults that house the caskets of whole families. Eva Peron is buried there and some other famous political figures from the region. We later found ourselves a lackluster shopping mall and made our way back to get ready for the evening.

I really wanted to try out the tango, but Bryan is self-conscious about the height difference and doesn't really want to humor me on it, so we did the next best thing and went to my dream hotel to see a tango performance and have a fancy meal. The Faena Hotel and Universe is where rock stars stay when they come to town and would run about US$550 for an average room. It's a Philippe Starck typically gaudy, over-the-top and kitchy, yet still elegant piece of architecture that I had to make sure we visited. We got dressed up and had dinner with bottomless wine and champagne in a room with dark reds and low lighting and listened to the sexy sounds coming from the piano, accordion and string section as beautiful people danced for us, legs and skirts flying about. After the show we stuck around and had some more wine near the beautiful pool, with more red lights illuminating the scene.

Miscellaneous facts about Argentina worth noting: Even old people eat dinner at midnight on Sunday nights (and I mean really old, the grey-haired senior crowd.)
-Watch where you walk. The sidewalks are lined with gifts from local dogs.
-Some corner stores advertise that they're open 25 hours. No wonder I'm still jet lagged.
-Bry and I have been pretty lazy and relaxing a bit, maybe suffering from steak-induced comas here and there throughout the day. Hence the lack of plentiful updates.