There were two main reasons we came back to Buenos Aires. For one, we weren’t too fond of the official FX rate we’re getting which hasn’t moved at 5 peso for 1 dollar. That, and we miss that hot pot place…a lot!
We checked-in to our hostel, showered and went out to our usual guy to change money. They were quite happy to see us as we’ve been doing so much business with them! They gave us an uncompetitive rate, and so we just walked out, found another guy on the street and got what we thought was more fair. While traveling, one thing we’re not afraid to do is to walk out of a bad deal with some friendly faces! Saved us a bit of money, enough for a nice meal!
We were sort of hungry at 5pm, so without a thought we headed straight out to the hot pot place….. WHICH IS NOT OPEN TIL 7:30pm! Argh… so with two hours to blow, we wandered around the bustling streets where another street market was! Seems like people in Buenos Aires really love their street markets, and the best part is they seem to congregate around museums, so we actually checked out a cool natural history museum with some funky animals that are now extinct, including a few really, really funny looking chickens. We also saw some close-ups of the giant petrels we saw from afar in Antarctica, and we really see why they’re called giant….because they’re HUGE! Like 2x bigger than my 30lb dog, huge.
We got kicked out at 7pm, and killed another 25minutes before standing outside the still unopened doors of the restaurant, wondering if they weren’t open on Sundays or something. Fear sat in quickly, and we scrambled around looking for any signs. We wandered into the Chinese supermarket next door, asking if they knew if they would open today, but they just told us to knock on the large metal door.
At this moment, out of nowhere, a massive flood of cyclists came riding through. Some were in mountain bikes, some wore tights cycling in their road bike, there were tantem bikes, pink bikes with baskets in front, BMXs, and strange looking bikes with even stranger riders. It took a good 10minutes before the last of the cyclists passed us as we stood still, watching as the car traffic behind them furiously looking for another road to get past them. And when we turned around, our hopes finally arrived, the restaurants gates were up, doors were wide open and several tables already full of people!
Hotpot is awesome. This place is even better, considering we’re in Buenos Aires and not Asia. And for whatever reason, their vegetables are RIDICULOUSLY fresh, like, probably picked ripe the afternoon and arrived on our plates that same night. Making us wonder why back home in Toronto, we can’t get the same level of fresh veggies despite having a Chinese population multiple times as large?
Taking the subway back, we were, once again, waved off when we wanted to buy a ticket and was told to open the gates ourselves and walk right through. This is the THIRD time that’s happened to us…. no clue, maybe you don’t pay for Metro rides on Sundays?
We’ve come to be accustomed to the ways and locales of BA, having spent 8 days here. It’s been a while, but this place does feel a bit like home to us, but like everything during our travels, it’s only temporary until we’re on the move again.
Join us as we set sail around South America 