Walking, Eating and Just Living in BA

We kind of took a day off on Tuesday.  Our only outing was to buy a few groceries and to purchase some ravioli to go from a little pasta factory down the street - made a nice simple dinner with salad and we had leftovers which are in the freezer for another day. And, of course, a nice red wine.  

Wednesday it was time to do laundry.  The apartment building has two washers and dryer in a tiny room for the whole building and we didn't want to bother with that so found a laundry about two blocks away and carried our stuff over there.  Then we hiked over to the Bellas Artes Museium - just past the Recoleta Cemetery.  It was free and a wonderful art museum with a very fine collection of art from the 17th century on including some wonderful works by Masters:  French, Italian, Dutch and more including Monet, Degas, Toulouse, and much more including sculptures and antique furniture and artifacts.

Bellas Artes Museium

We did a little shopping at the supermarket and decided to try the lomo novillito - beef tenderloin from a young steer.  Our refrigerator wasn't cold enough so we were hoping that a serviceman was going to show up and he did.  Our rental manager brought him and we chatted while the guy worked on the fridge.  Alfredo was born in the US to Argentine parents in Pennsylvania who moved back to Argentina for a while but Alfredo returned to the US to go to school.  He is well educated and his wife has a PhD in molecular biology from Princeton.  They moved back to Argentina 7 or 8 years ago and have two cute little girls that were with him. He's doing a good job as an apartment rental agent - he's answered all our questions and made sure everything is taken care of. The fridge works now.

I cooked the filets for our comida and they were fabulous!  Better than any we have had in years. They were extremely tender with a great flavor.  The price for about a pound of meat was around $8 US.  We had some leftovers. 

We picked up our laundry in the early evening - everything smelled good and was nicely folded.  We had taken the sheets and towels because I couldn't find a spare set of sheets in the apartment.  What we didn't know was that the cleaning girl coming the next day was going to change the sheets and the spares are in a locked closet.  Oh well, we won't have to do them next week or thereafter which will make doing laundry a lot easier.  

Today we had thought about taking the bus for the first time to another neighborhood or downtown to see some of the government buildings and Mayo Plaza.  However, as I was surfing around the Internet, I found out about a free walking tour of BA which runs every day from the Plaza Italia starting at 11:00.  It covers a lot of ground including taking the public buses to get from one area to another and it lasts for 4 hours.  Trip Advisor rated it as one of the top things to do in BA so that is our plan for tomorrow.  Instead of exploring farther afield today, we set off for a local walk when the maid showed up.  We headed north on one of the main streets by us - Heras.  Right at the corner  by our apartment building is a very odd looking building which on the maps is identified as a law school.  So I looked it up and discovered that it was started years ago but due to various circumstances and lack of funding, it was never finished and that explains why it looks so strange.  However, there are 3000 students going to school there so I guess it is functional.  Here's a picture:

After we had walked a bit over a km we thought about comida.  There happened to be a neat looking restaurant and we decided to give it a try - El Caballito.  They had a 3 course lunch with several choices for 79 Arg pesos $16US - it included a starter, main course, wine or beer, dessert and coffee.  Well, the starter was an omelet with ham, cheese & tomato which could have been a meal on its own.  The main was what they called a "mini bife de chorizo" (strip steak) with french fries.  We had a beer and finally chocolate ice cream for dessert.  We were stuffed to the gills It was way too much food but we ate most of it except for the fries.  Here's what it looked like:

Everything was delicious.  Only the steak was more well done than we like it but it was still tender and tasty. We waddled on home and luxuriated in a nice clean apartment.  Now we are resting up for our 4 hour walking tour tomorrow.  We'll need the 4 hours of walking to make up for our gluttony today.