May Day & Gourmet in BA

We've been readjusting well to city life since arriving in Buenos Aires late Thursday night. We're staying in a lovely little guesthouse called the Cocker (so named after the previous owner's dog) in the neighborhood of San Telmo - an area of restaurants, antique shops and designer boutiques.
So far, our time here has been primarily consumed with two activities: walking (as the weather gods have continued to smile on us we've been exploring large swaths of the city on foot) and eating (BA is a food city that ranks with the best of them and we've done our best to take advantage. This is also a great way to offset all that walking).
On Friday we set out to explore the city center and Retiro. Unfortunately, it took us about half the day and several attempts at visiting closed museums for us to realize that May 1st is a national holiday! On the bright side, Recoleta Cemetery (where Eva Peron and other national icons are buried) is open every day and we spent part of the afternoon wandering through.

The weekend pretty much consisted of us repeating portions of our Friday walk - with a good deal more success as things were actually open. On Saturday we visited the Casa Rosada (the Argentine Presidential Palace as featured in both Madonna's film Evita and real-life Argentine history), the exceptional National Fine Arts Museum, and the BA Design Centre. Most interesting about the Casa Rosada is that fact that you could just wander into the building - probably a while since this was last true about either the White House or most European presidential residences.

Some say that the pink color came from cow's blood - a common paint additive at the time

Is that an obelisk or are you just happy to see me? El Centro on the weekend.

We spent yesterday enjoying the street markets of San Telmo - one of BA's main Sunday attractions. We also had a chance to visit a restored 19th century house in the neighborhood where they'd discovered remains of 16th century life below. Its now been excellently restored and can even be rented out for events (for those of you looking for a place for your next Bar Mitzvah or Family Reunion, you can find more info here).


Interesting display of posters and... gloves.

That brings me to our other primary activity here - eating! We've enjoyed both traditional Argentine Parillas (those meat and malbec places of Gaucho lore) and more modern eateries too. The highlight so far was probably last night at La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar where we enjoyed a 10 course tasting menu with wine pairings at an Argentina bargain price. The head chef Alejandro Diglio formerly worked under Ferran Adria at El Bulli in Spain and has infused touches of molecular gastronomy in his menu. Though everything was delightful, the following dishes really stood out:
Grilled Bread with Egg Yolk & Truffles, served with a chicken-leg reduction (Pan/Heuvo/Trufe)
Lamb Loin and Scallops served with sweet potato puree (mar y montaña, cordero-vieyras)
Ribeye with Malbec reduction and radish ratatouille (Ojo de Bife)
Rabbit with Apple jelly and foam (Conejo/Manzana Verde)
Two amazing desserts, one featuring a "dirt" of chocolate mousse