Expeditions

[From last night]

Glad I had just made the post on the concept of vacilando -- we went to go to a restaurant in our neighborhood that came highly recommended [http://www.buenosairestravelplanet.com/top-10-restaurants-in-palermo/], only to discover that it wasn't there. Closed tonight? Out of business? In Buenos Aires it's very hard to tell. We walked around for a while looking for someplace else we wanted to eat, and in the end we came back home & made sandwiches.

While the power was out tonight for a couple of hours -- apparently a regular occurrence here in the summers -- I walked over a block or so to where a group of dancers and drummers was rehearsing under the overpass for our neighborhood's Carnaval parade next weekend. Really fun stuff; reminded me a lot of living in New Orleans.

[From today]

Big expedition today: went first to the Japanese gardens, which were pretty good, and then to a big Carrefour where we'd heard we could get stuff pretty cheaply. Got pillowcases, a few lightweight items of clothing, toothpicks, candles...some of the mundane things we'd had trouble finding before. Still couldn't afford a fan (especially after our memory-foam-pillow splurge yesterday) -- household goods, electrical stuff, electronics: these things are *not* cheap here; in fact they're more expensive than they are in the States. On the other hand, some stuff is quite cheap: empanadas stuffed with your choice of fillings run about a buck. Lawn chairs were also more expensive than we could bring ourselves to spend (about $80 IIRC), but they had some camping stools for about six dollars, so we got one of those. Took our first cab to get home with all the stuff, which was roughly comparable to the US ($7.50 US, and no convention of tipping taxi drivers here). Not something we'll do often, but every once in a while it'll come in really handy.

Very happy to be home :)