The Silver River

Last night we ventured out. We decided to go straight to Sitges, this bar at 4119 Cordoba. We left home at 22.30 and took a 10 minute cab ride. The bar hadn’t opened. Now, I know things happen late here but sooo late. So we strolled up Cordoba and waited until 23.00 when the bar opened. Talk about desperate. It remained empty for a little while and then filled up quite quickly. I think next time we will aim to not get there before 24.00. Yikes! I can see lots of daytime naps ahead. The bar was nice, it’s kind of like a gay Sports Bar although of course they don’t show sport, only music videos and other visual montages. Beer was cheap, well the local beer, Quilmes. We paid AR$30 (5 English Pounds) for three and AR$45 (8 Pounds) for three vodkas. Not bad. We were home by about 02.00. We considered going to a club but decided we’d leave that for another day.

I grabbed this book at London City Airport before I left, Supercapitlism and am enjoying reading it. Although I’ve only just read the first couple of chapters, the basic premise is that the current form of capitalism active in the US is at the expense of democracy and although democracy and capitalism have been successful bed partners in the past that was during times of comprehensive and far reaching state intervention and regulation (arguably Socialist in nature). I’ll keep you posted as I read more.

Okay, so I've been here for about 2 days and I've have formed some ideas about the cost of living. Of course I'll need to be here a lot longer before I can really comment with any authority but my initial thoughts are that it's not as cheap as I originally thought it might be. Some things, like rent and travel, are dirt cheap but food and going out isn't. Then I spotted this item today about the global cost of living for expats and it seems BA is still relatively affordable. BA comes in at 138th. Moscow is the most expensive apparently. London comes in third. We got the Subte (Subway) yesterday for the first time. Now that is cheap. 90 centavos. That's 17p. Compared to near 4 pounds in London! And such stunning stations.

DSC00535 Originally uploaded by owenaj Well... whatever next? A curious name for a coffee.

The first thing we did on our first day in Buenos Aires is head to the grocery store to get supplies. On the way, we stopped at a little coffee shop for a light breakfast. Vlad and I had two media lunas with ham and cheese and CMC had an omlette. We were struck by how sweet the croissants were and then I remembered reading about the Argentine's famous sweet tooth with everything being sweetened. Even the ground coffee Vlad tried to buy in the supermarket came pre-sweetened. It feels very real when you're buying groceries. We went to a large Supermercado called Disco on Paraguay. It wasn't particularly big by UK standards but seemed to have everything you could want. The shopping total came to AR$288 (around 53 UK Pounds) which was less than I imagined. And, as it was the first shop we've done we had to get a lot of staple items that are quite expensive. We also got quite a lot of food for that. It wasn't dirt cheap by any means but reasonable. It's always intere...

Here is my first photo taken in Buenos Aires. We arrived last night. It still feels a bit freaky, I have to confess. Not an anti climax but still doesn't feel quite real. Getting out of the airport was so efficient last night that we arrived at the apartment an hour before we were due. The apartment company were meeting us at 21.00. We spent an hour in a nearby coffee shop. I had cafe con leche, Chris and Vlad had cokes. While we were sitting there I was struck by how confident I was that we had made the right decision. This town is cool. At 21.00 we met the company rep and were shown around our respective apartments. Vlad is actually not in the same building as we are, but in one just down road. The guy was in a bit of a hurry so kind of rushed us through the process, thankfully. Vlad's guy took over an hour! As soon as we'd settled in, had a shower and gathered ourselves we headed out for a stroll. We wandered down Billinghurst (our street) and along Soler to El Salvador....

DSC00463 Originally uploaded by owenaj After all the fussing, planning and stressing, getting to BA was easy. Lufthansa were great and everything worked like clockwork. Between ariving at the First terminal and being checked in ready to go was about 5 minutes. Everything managed perfectly. Getting out of BA's EZE airport was similarly quick. We were in the car heading for the apartment within 30 minutes of touching down! The flight is long! It's the longest single flight I've ever been on but Lufthansa kept us fed and watered. Managed to snooze a bit but as it's daytime it wasn't that easy. The food was excellent indeed, I had pumpkin goulash for dinner, lamb for lunch and that also served loads of intermediate bits and pieces, sort of mezze style food. Delicious. Spent most of the time watching episodes of Arrested Development that I'd preloaded onto my iPod. All in all a very relaxing flight and seamless transfers. I love it when a plan comes together.