As it is unlikely that we will receive anything from Pete Ford this century, I will provide a short account of our night in together in Punta del Este:
Arsenal beat AC Milan 2-0. Pete got very drunk and offended everybody.
Right - now that's done - on with the blog. As Liz has written below we had an absolutely packed few days in Buenos Aires. Here are 3 reasons why Buenos Aires is one of the greatest places on earth:
Arsenal beat AC Milan 2-0. Pete got very drunk and offended everybody.
Right - now that's done - on with the blog. As Liz has written below we had an absolutely packed few days in Buenos Aires. Here are 3 reasons why Buenos Aires is one of the greatest places on earth:
1) Sirloin steak bought at the supermarket is the same price by weight as bread.
2) Restaurants, bars and ice cream parlours remain open very very late at night (later even than kebab vans in the UK).
3) It has a botanical garden jam packed full of cats.
At the risk of turning this blog into a homage to beef, I will briefly discuss the steak. It is very good and very cheap. I had at least one steak for every day that we were in BA. A particlar favourite of mine was vaciopan (meaning "cow in bread" or something similar). Literally a big steak in a big roll - no garnish, no salad, no nonsense. Costs 1.2GBP.
Something we also did every day (nearly) was visit the cat gardens. Basically some rare plants, fenced off and surrounded by hundreds of cats. Everywhere you look there's a cat. It is a very surreal and wonderful place. But how did they all get here? The story goes that at some point these botanical gardens suffered an infestation of rodents and a few cats were introduced to keep the numbers down. These cats then started to breed and now there is an infestation of cats! People seem to be happier with the new residents however, and many locals feed them with cat food and even chunks of meat. Who knows what they'll do if the numbers get too big however. Dogs/Bears?
Guns. As Liz mentions below, we visited a gun museum, and oh yes there were a lot of guns. What she didn't mention was the man who "showed-us-around". As we were looking at a couple of old hand-guns, we were approached by a middle aged man who began jabbering at us in Spanish. As our Spanish is slightly better than our Portugese, we eventually worked out he wanted to know where we were from. "England," we said. Turns out he was a veteran of the Falklands war. But, fortunately (and I aplogise for my poor Spanish here):
"No es una problema con ustedes. Es una problema con Maggie Thatcher."
So that's OK then? To prove there were no hard feelings, he began to give us a very detailed tour of every single gun the museum had to offer, in rapid, technical, incomprehensible Spanish. After an excruciating 20 minutes or so, I looked theatrically down at my watch, said something like "Aye carumba!" and we were able make our excuses and leave. A word of advice: Never visit a museum dedicated to war, in a country you have recently been at war with ...
At the risk of turning this blog into a homage to beef, I will briefly discuss the steak. It is very good and very cheap. I had at least one steak for every day that we were in BA. A particlar favourite of mine was vaciopan (meaning "cow in bread" or something similar). Literally a big steak in a big roll - no garnish, no salad, no nonsense. Costs 1.2GBP.
Something we also did every day (nearly) was visit the cat gardens. Basically some rare plants, fenced off and surrounded by hundreds of cats. Everywhere you look there's a cat. It is a very surreal and wonderful place. But how did they all get here? The story goes that at some point these botanical gardens suffered an infestation of rodents and a few cats were introduced to keep the numbers down. These cats then started to breed and now there is an infestation of cats! People seem to be happier with the new residents however, and many locals feed them with cat food and even chunks of meat. Who knows what they'll do if the numbers get too big however. Dogs/Bears?
Guns. As Liz mentions below, we visited a gun museum, and oh yes there were a lot of guns. What she didn't mention was the man who "showed-us-around". As we were looking at a couple of old hand-guns, we were approached by a middle aged man who began jabbering at us in Spanish. As our Spanish is slightly better than our Portugese, we eventually worked out he wanted to know where we were from. "England," we said. Turns out he was a veteran of the Falklands war. But, fortunately (and I aplogise for my poor Spanish here):
"No es una problema con ustedes. Es una problema con Maggie Thatcher."
So that's OK then? To prove there were no hard feelings, he began to give us a very detailed tour of every single gun the museum had to offer, in rapid, technical, incomprehensible Spanish. After an excruciating 20 minutes or so, I looked theatrically down at my watch, said something like "Aye carumba!" and we were able make our excuses and leave. A word of advice: Never visit a museum dedicated to war, in a country you have recently been at war with ...
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