Buenos Aires: Food & Drink on the Cheap

Three pounds of meat -- short ribs, strip steak and sirloin. A giant bowl of french fries. A caesar salad. A bottle of wine. A bottle of water.

The price? $100. Pesos, that is. In greenbacks, that's about $25.

In America, $25 wouldn't even cover the wine.

Eating, drinking and then eating some more were some of our favorite parts of our vacation to Buenos Aires. Paul had a steak (grass-fed, unseasoned beef) about every other day. I opted for empanadas. I downed 16 of them in six days, effectively octupling my lifetime empanada intake in less than a week.

No one drinks tap water -- my go-to drink -- in Buenos Aires restaurants, and a bottle of water was generally about $2 (this and all subsequent prices in this post will be in U.S. dollars). However, bottles of wine and liters of beer started at about $6, so it was difficult to resist getting that instead. Often we got both.

And sometimes we just ate meat, cheese, bread with a bottle of wine on the deck of the apartment we rented for the week.

Speaking of liters -- that was definitely the most common size of beer available. Tables would order a beer -- generally Stella Artois, Heineken, Schneider or Quilmes -- and get glasses that held maybe 10 or 12 ounces. I think I was served only one pint the entire week there.

Liters, while cheap in restaurants, were even cheaper in supermarkets -- just a little over a dollar.

One of my favorite restaurants of the week: La Carreteria, in the area of La Boca and San Telmo

I quickly learned to order "agua sin gas" (still water) rather than "agua con gas" (seltzer), which is so popular it even comes with your coffee and tea in cafes. More Spanish I learned: "batata." That's sweet potato, and it makes a delicious pastry filling.

Another item on our must-do list was drink mate. Along with a mate cup filled to the brim with bitter leaves came a pot of hot water and some savory cookies.

The tea -- which really just looks like lawn trimmings -- soaked a little water at a time, and the more you were able to add, the less bitter it became. (When we left, we saw a table adding sugar to the tea, which definitely would have improved the taste.) You drink the tea through a special metal straw that strains the water and prevents the leaves from entering your mouth. Mate seems to be just as popular as they say -- in Uruguay especially we saw people carrying and drinking the tea everywhere.

And now for the story you've all been waiting for -- how Paul and I got robbed for the very first time. Net loss: a single bottle of Coke.

Here's what happened: Paul was snapping a few pictures of me at the Obelisco, a Washington Monument-lookalike downtown. He sat down his 3/4-full bottle next to him. Before we knew it, a guy in a a wheelchair -- presumably homeless -- rolled up and grabbed the Coke. "Gracias amigo!" he called out.

Stunned at first, Paul then started laughing before calling back, "De nada!" Our robber rolled around the corner, unscrewed the cap and took a swig, all while I was watching. Better a Coke than my purse.

The scene of the crime.

Vacation to Buenos Aires: Following Evita

Casa Rosada

When we returned to New York early Sunday morning after eight days in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the real world slammed into me like a brick wall.

I was cranky because vacation was over. I was cold, leaving 80 degree temperatures for ones in the 40s. I was tired after 13 hours of flying, split between two legs. And to make matters worse, my checked suitcase was still in Peru, having failed to make the connection.

Bam.

But things have to go wrong once in a while so you know just how good everything else is, right? And this vacation was good.

I've been enamored with Argentina ever since watching the movie version of "Evita" some 13 or 14 years ago. In fact, my dad and I have a tradition of watching it every winter, when I'm home for the holidays. I had a basic knowledge of the city's major sights ("Rio de la Plata, Florida, Corrientes, Nueve de Julio") solely from the movie soundtrack. And, of course, one of our first stops in Buenos Aires was the Casa Rosada, Argentina's equivalent to the White House, where Evita Peron spoke to the masses and Evita sings "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" in the production.

Later in the week we visited the Museo Evita. Most of the museum's information wasn't new to me, but the way she was portrayed was surprising. There was no hint whatsoever of the controversy surrounding her life and charity. And no mention of the musical or movie -- which isn't so surprising when you consider that they didn't exactly paint a picture of a saint.

Of course, Evita's family mausoleum in the Cementerio de la Recoleta is also a big tourist draw, but she hasn't always been buried there. A couple of years after she died in 1952, her remains were even spirited away to Italy by anti-Peronists and buried for 16 years under a false name.

Tourists at Evita's grave

Elsewhere in the cemetery

Although Evita was the spark that sent us to Argentina, most of our trip in fact did not revolve her. This week and next week I'll be sharing the highlights and lowlights of our eight days in Argentina and Uruguay -- how we got robbed for the first time ever (it's not nearly as bad as you think), why Buenos Aires probably has a host of plumbing problems because of me (I'm happy to finally stop carrying around my own roll of toilet paper), and what I'll miss most about the city (mostly $6 bottles of wine and liters of beer).

I'd been looking forward to visiting Argentina for so long that I was afraid it wouldn't live up to my expectations. Instead, the country exceeded them. I wish I were still there.

Casa Rosada, even more rosada at night with pink lights

A One-Week Blogging Break

I'm taking a blogging holiday next week! I'll be back at my normal Monday - Wednesday - Friday posting schedule on Monday, Nov. 29. Happy Thanksgiving!