Buenos Aires

So far we've eaten more pasta than steak. Buenos Aires has such an Italian influence that even their Spanish sounds like it's spoken with an Italian accent. Argentina is a fascinating and beautiful and diverse and sad place. Once a leading world-class city an the economic capital of South America, it was then plagued by decades of dictatorship, then, after the return of democracy, a major currency crisis that the country has yet to recover from. That's resulted on a mix of beautiful, French-inspired neighborhoods, a modern but very cheap subway system, and abject poverty evident by four- and five-year-old children left alone to panhandle on the sidewalk or hawk knives with their mothers on major thoroughfares after dark.

But it's not been all depressing. We've biked the city, visited monuments, parks, and great neighborhoods, shared a mate with a local, had beers over live music in a plaza of San Telmo, an energetic bohemian neighborhood, and ventured northwest to the Paran'a Delta, another world where portenos escape for the weekend. The houses are on stilts and each have a small dock, but are connected only by narrow flagstone sidewalks. Much like a rural Venice, there are no roads in sight. For public transportation, only collectivo launches.

Last night we had dinner at the Kentucky Pizzaria. Seriously. Before I'm accused of abandoning my travel principles, Buenos Aires is famous for it's pizza and we were told by a local that the Kentucky was among the best. (And we'd had the other local specialty - steak - for lunch.) the Kentucky has been here since 1942 and didn't disappoint, but the pizza was not like anything I've seen at home: whole olives, large cuts of ham, and hearts of palm (try finding those in Lexington). the logo featured a jockey on a racehorse, though.

I haven't figured out a way to post pictures from here yet, but I'll add some eventually.