original little hellraisers

day 15 - january 12th, 2009

so — this was originally the day we were supposed to go home.  we booked another hotel in buenos aires while we try to jump on standby flights to get home somehow.  i have never done standby with luggage before, so i don’t know that it’s actually possible or not.  we’re going to try though.

we got up early again (8am) to get to the airport in time.  this is one of those back country airports that has one counter agent and a million people in line.  our flight was delayed an hour.  and on and on our travel luck continues to disappoint.

we landed in buenos aires for the second time this trip — and this is where our buenos aires luck went stratospheric.

we had no place to stay, so yesterday we booked a place on hotels.com.  we were skeptical — it was 87 dollars a night (plus 20% taxes) and was one of those places where you know they staged the photos ever so perfectly to make it look too good to be true.  fine, it’s not in palermo soho (rather palermo hollywood), but it’s shorter to walk from here to the center of town than it was from the vain hotel (where we previously stayed).

and the room is probably one of the better hotel rooms we’ve had on this trip.  it has that same modern appeal that kara likes.  it has a hd tv, iphone docs, hardwired internet and wi-fi on every floor.  they give you power adaptors and will arrange for your transfer back to the airport.  not only is it a fantastic deal, the business model is particularly interesting.  the rooms meet a certain size criteria in argentina to be classified as apartments, so each ‘room’ of the hotel is owned by a different investor who pay a management fee to own hotels and voila, a hotel is born.  kinda cool.  if you ever come to buenos aires, stay here.  it’s well worth the money.

and then we headed out into town again for lunch at bar 6.  after 4pm, they stop serving lunch and go back to serving breakfast (i know, makes no sense, right)?  we ordered a few beers and then were going to hit up uriarte — a highly recommended place by all the travel books, kasey, lexie, etc.  it is being remodeled.  so we decided to head to casa cruz (no website i can find, unfortunately) instead. we had no reservations but walked in anyway.  guido, the maitre’d met us at the door and told us he could find us a seat if we sat down on the plush couches.  we did.  then ordered some swanky drinks (kara = lychee martini, me = sidecar).  the whole interior of the place is decked out in plush red and dark wood paneling.  we had this huge, homo-erotic painting on the wall near us (that we wanted to take a photo of, but that felt, well, too touristy) with a bunch of gladiatorial midgets (yes, i’m serious) wearing nothing but their birthday suits and, on occasion in the painting, getting frisky.

the most stunning part of the whole place though is the wine cellar.  the ceilings were probably 30 or so feet tall and the wine cellar went the whole length of the back wall and to the ceiling.  a giant wine rack, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, walled off in the front in glass.  it was absolutely stunning.  they leave the middle portion of the rack empty so you can have a view back into the kitchen to see what the chefs are up to.

we had a palette cleanser to start — some sort of gazpacho.  we weren’t sure if it contained crab, so I got to cleanse my palette twice.

kara had a small green salad with goat cheese (too salty by her admission) and i got a grilled white asparagus salad with a warmed egg, bread crumbs and some finely diced red pepper (delicious).  for mains, kara got the veal with a bearnaise sauce and papas fritas, i got the smoked pork with a corn mash, smoked cheese sauce and a quince jelly. they were so confident with the veal that they set kara’s place with a butter knife.  fancy trick.

both dishes were absolutely amazing.

we ordered a bottle of wine from mendoza where the vintner grows his grapes “roman style” — that is to say, he plants them where they will grow best, not in the organized rows you see in other vineyards.  and he’s growing at an altitude that people said wasn’t possible.  i guess he’s a bit of a wine-making rebel.  it was delicious.

kara got an apple tart with black pepper ice cream for desert — at this point, the clock is at about 1am.  we settled up — most expensive meal so far, but by far the best — and decided to hit the bar next door for one drink.

we must have, unbeknownst to us, joined some secret club of exclusivity today.  the bar makes you buy poker chips at this swanky front desk to then go order your drinks with.  turns out the restaurant next door owns the place — now it all makes sense. we ordered our drinks with our chips, sat in the back patio near the fireplace and took a moment to reflect on what has been an incredible trip.

we head home tomorrow.  can’t wait to see the boys.