It's a long weekend

We started the week with all these ambitions about what we would do this weekend considering it is a long one (Monday is Columbus day). In reality we've done none of the things we were planning on doing and it has been almost the most perfect way to enjoy the weekend.

Saturday was walked and walked and walked. We went all over the place. First was a trip to Oui Oui, a restaurant in Palermo (across the railway in Palermo Hollywood) which serves English (well, American) and French breakfasts. I'd read about it on a blog and had written down the name. It was heaven, very charming and quite quirky, delicious scrambled eggs. Argentines do not do eggs for breakfast, in fact Tali, our Spanish teacher, seems almost appalled at the prospect. Why eat eggs when there's perfectly good dulche de leche and medialunas available.

After breakfast we walked all the way across Palermo to the park zone marvelling at all the massive apartment buildings going up in Palermo, some really huge ones and seemingly a new one on every corner.

At first we went to the main parks in Palermo, near Plaza Italia and they were packed, and this was relatively early in Argentine time. I have read and am beginning to agree that Argentine love crowds, they are very sociable and love being in groups. It's the only reason why one park was packed and the other (literally across the street and identical in every way) was completely empty. We kept on walking and settled in Plaza Alemania, my absolute favourite park in Buenos Aires. It's so green and calm.

We lay in the sun, I read my book and basically just relaxed. It was heaven.

When we were just about to overheat we decided to take a stroll and try to find a shopping mall we'd not been to. We walked through the "embassy" area, past grand houses and statue upon statue. A very cool part of town indeed. The mall (once we found it) was pretty standard stuff, not terribly exciting but a good place to cool down. We have cokes and a chocolate pudding to share.

In the early evening I went for a stroll and picked up my clothes from the cleaner.

On Saturday night, Chris and I went out for dinner. Vlad is away at the moment so it was just the two of us. We went to Bar 6 (of course) and had the most divine rib-eye steaks and some really strong cocktails. After that we headed to Bulnes (a bar we'd not really tried on a Saturday night - we had it on authority that Saturday is the ONLY night to go). It was fun, quite different from the other bars in that all the other customers are clearly quiet wealthy and well dressed. After a couple hours there we headed to Glam (a club)... it seems people at Sitges (another bar) all head to Amerika (a club) when they are finished there, and everyone at Bulnes heads to Glam. Pretty much the whole bar was there. It was really fun, it's a good club, quite civilised and small and in the most amazing building, really beautiful. Needless to say, it was a LATE night... we got in about 5.30. Not too bad considering we only had dinner at 11!

Oui Oui, Nicaragua 6068