Friday, July 04, 2008

Tastet 4th of July Tradition

I think the 4th of July is probably Kevin's favorite holiday. Not for the fireworks or bbqing, but for the Continental Congress and Declaration of Independence. Every year, we have to watch the musical 1776 and read the Declaration of Independence, out loud - sentence by sentence. I thought I might get out of the annual reading when I heard it read on NPR. I ran into the bedroom and turned up the radio so Kevin could hear it as well. NPR had a different correspondent read each sentence.

No luck, I still had to do the "reading". When Kevin got up, the first thing he did (after making coffee) was to put 1776 on. Ugh.

We are going to take a break and go for a bike ride. I can now ride my bike, if I don't clip in and keep it flat.

In addition to the Declaration of Independence rituals, our other Tastet tradition is to medicate Duke with Xanax. He gets really jumpy with the fireworks. Maggie doesn't care. Last night I gave him a Xanax when the fireworks started going off. He then only groaned with each pop or bang.

Buenos Aires

I started my last days in Buenos Aires by meeting Kevin for lunch in Puerto Madero. He had walked around all morning and I needed a nap, so we headed back to the hotel for some quick zz's before our tango lesson.

In the evening we made our way to Palermo (I really like this neighborhood) and started the adventure of finding the tango studio. We ended up being early (we thought we were on time, but Argentineans are more lax in their time then the Chileans. We were hoping the lesson would be in english (at least partly), but were up for the challenge of all spanish. Guess what, all spanish. It made us have to really concentrate on what they were showing and try to guess what they were saying.

After the lesson we had dinner in Palermo at a little Italian place. I know Argentina is supposed to have the best beef, but I was tired of red meat. I grew up on a cattle farm, maybe I am biased, but I don't think the steaks in South America were any better then what I grew up with. They were cooked much better, but the underlying flavor was no better.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel (it was now almost 11) .

Saturday we ordered room service for breakfast, thinking it had to be better than the breakfast downstairs. Nope. We then headed out for the day. We took the subway to Plaza de Mayo where Kevin showed me the cathedral (yes another cathedral), Casa Rosada (the pink building from which Evita spoke and every other politician or leader speaks when they want to gain public support. We then walked down Florida Ave, which is a pedestrian only road filled with stores and hundreds of people handing you little flyer advertisements for stores. We had lunch at the Galleria, a big indoor mall that has beautiful murals painted on the ceilings. After lunch we headed back to the hotel on foot. We had to cross 9 de Julio (it was more like crossing 4 different streets with 16 lanes of traffic.

After a quick nap we headed to the Recoleta Cemetary where Kevin had me find Evita's tomb. This cemetary is filled with B.A.'s elite. It was cool and creepy at the same time. I am really creeped out by seeing the actual coffin in the crypts. We weren't really hungry so we stepped in to a bar for a beer and some tapas.

Come Sunday I was really ready to come home. The car was going to pick us up at 4, so we still had a lot of the day to use. Rather then the hotel breakfast, we walked around the corner to a restaurant...we should have had breakfast here every day. We then caught a cab to San Telmo where we proceeded to walk through the Sunday craft market, all of the way back to Plaza de Mayo. We then caught a cab back to Recoleta for a quick lunch (at 3) and then to the hotel for our flight home.