Traveling With Elliot: 04/06/07

Hi everyone,

We are en route to NJ as we write this and overall we all had a fantastic trip. Elliot has been great throughout our journey and is already missing Argentina. We are looking forward to bringing him back when he will actually be able to remember some of it.

We completed our Uruguay journey around 11:00pm on Saturday and made it back for a late dinner. Most people would consider 11:00pm a very late dinner but that is actually prime time in Argentina. We actually felt somewhat normal in the restaurant since it was packed when we got there which is a nice change from eating in an empty restaurant which we did for most of the trip. Another surprise was that there were a lot of other babies and toddlers out and awake at that time. Even when we left at 12:30am the restaurant was still packed with people waiting to be seated.

Since we hit all of the "must see" places on our last trip we were able to relax a little more and focus on the more important things like food, shopping and of course, an obligatory zoo visit.

In contrast to Montevideo, the Buenos Aires Zoo was enjoyable for all even though you could not tear grass out of the ground and hand feed it to the Giraffe. Elliot as you would expect, had a lot of fun feeing the sheep, goats and llamas.

We didn't even know there was such a thing as a White Lion but they had one here and it was a major attraction. Maybe a genetic mutation or too many years in the Argentinean sun but here it is.

If beef is the national food of Argentina then dulce de leche is either tied for first place or a close second. This combination of milk and sugar is found in desserts, on pancakes, in cookies and as a base for ice cream (there are around 10 dulce de leche variations in each heladeria). Elliot had all of the above but his favorite was the do-it-yourself cookie kit in the hotel where he was able to create his own Alfajore cookie combinations.

The remainder of our trip was spent relaxing, wandering the city taking in sights and exploring new areas. We set out one day to find Chinatown which occupied a 2 square block radius on the outskirts of the city. Of course we had to sample the food at one of the 6 restaurants we spotted. It was actually pretty good, and has some local variations like carrots which are heavily used in contrast to NY Chinese food. However, no dulce de leche on the menu here which was the first place we didn't see it :)

We concluded our trip with a shopping day and hit some of the local malls. The largest mall had a children's museum and an amusement park called "Neverland". No relation to the "Neverland Ranch" but we looked for Michael Jackson just to be on the safe side. Keith took elliot on his first roller coaster ride which was scary at first but once he realized that it was just a fast train, he loved it.

They Mall even had a Kosher McDonalds. As you would expect, the food tastes even worse than the regular ones.

This place was not on our radar but while walking around we found El Gato Viejo. After first being chased away by an attack golden retriever (really) the owner came over and invited us in. We are still not sure what is exactly going on here but essentially it is an old warehouse down by the rail yards that appears to be part lounge, part art gallery and part junk yard. As far as we can tell the owner/painter/sculptor creates large formed sculptures made from anything he can get his hands on such as car parts or typewriters.