chauchau BsAs! loveloveloved you

24 days later, the maleta is packed and reality is only a day away. sigh. luckily, the onset of depression caused by the imminent return to bills and billable hours did not stop me from having another fun-filled week in this fabulous city.

sunday, agustina and her friend carla came with me to marina's fashion show to check out argentine bling and take photos of ourselves + multi-colored sombreros

monday, i FINALLY hooked up with eli to fulfill my last argentine challenge -- tennis!

of course, no workout is complete without a post-workout grapefruit juice + apple pie a la mode

tuesday, i said bye to the lovely cara and hi/bye to this guy whose name i do not remember but who was reallyreallyreally into fishing. i didnt have the heart to tell him that fishing in a brown murky river is probably not the best idea but to each his own...

wednesday, i finally got to see the super awesome lucrecia again. luli, you are hilarious and i can't wait to start our own international law firm (in which everyone else works and we spend the day drinking cappuccinos and sprite zero).

and then i had a minor breakdown when i had to say bye to agustina. aguchy, despues de solo dos semanas, eres como una hermana a mi. sin ti, este viaje nunca hubiera sido tan divertido y yo nunca hubiera sentido tan comoda en esta ciudad. eres una hermosa persona y soy tan alegre conocerte. siempre siempre estas bienvenido en mi casa. y si no en mi casa, nos vemos en nuestro viaje pronto!! besos/xoxo :)

in the end, such an awesome trip, but there's no place like home. see you soon, lovers!

el tigre, la boca, and argentine modeling? surewhynot...

peeps! the last few days have been action packed. here are the headlines from BsAs.

thursday, agustina and i headed to el tigre, a town that's a 50-minute train ride from BsAs, for some tranquilidad outside the city.

friday, of all the totally random things i have done in BsAs, marina asked me to step in for an absentee model and take some photos to show off her new fashion line. here is the least embarassing of the colleccion!

saturday morning, i took lovely cara to have the best eggs in the world at sirop folie. since this was my third time there, i asked the waiter, the same i've had each time, "me recuerdas?" and got a laugh and a yes.

go here

after lunch, we took a strollsy through the calles and did some shopping. cara suggested i get these coral/lobster earrings. too bad i already own a pair.

then we each bought one of these tchotchkes -- un arbol de la vida. for good luck and all.

and then i took cara to la boca, for some tourist traps. here's a shot of a store in the caminito section of la boca, the center of touristtrapville

cara was drawn into this boca juniors (BsAs soccer team) store by some blinging boca juniors ropa interior. i told her to also consider this lovely hat; i am sure it would be quite popular in the US.

and then we stopped in a cafe to rest our toesies and check out the creep menu. we had a hard time deciding whether to arma our creeps with the beff or the edible palms...

so we took the safe route and settled on a banana licuado -- cara's first!

and then we made a friend.

for the shot of the day:

please note that this is one small portion of a huge building billboard, about 50 stories high, on the widest street in the world.

i personally would've picked this photograph instead!

plazas and parks and...PP gets cooking!

hello ya'lls! after almost 3 weeks in BsAs, i'm becoming quite the argentine girl. here's a typical day in mi vida aqui:

wake up between 11 and 2:30, have coffee and breakfast, and leave apartment going down these stairs (almost ate it on day 2, have walked down with more caution since)

walk through plazas like this one...

fulfill challenge of the day (jen, here's my argentine "procedure" -- got my nails done!)

have lunch/dinner -- here, one of the best salmon and stir-fry veggies i've ever had at mala cara in recoleta

grab my favorite soda in argentina -- paso de toros light, grapefruit flavor

and go for another stroll through the neighborhood, seeing sights like this opera house ...

and the obelisk on the widest street in the world, 9 de julio.

tuesday, agustina and i got together for lunch and dulce de leche flavored helado in a nearby super nice neighborhood called las canitas

happy campers post-helado

and then today, to fulfill emily's challenge, i took an argentine cooking class! here is the teacher, norma, setting up the ingredients for lentil soup, empanadas de carne, and alfajores

PP stirring the meat filling for the empanadas ...

getting the empanadas ready for the oven ...

15 minutes later and voila, empanadas fresh from the oven!

this was so much fun!! if you ever come to BsAs, totally consider trying norma's cooking class!

and here's me after a nappy poo and some time to digest with jennifer's friend cara at malas artes in palermo for una botella de malbec. yum!

how i will ever return to the grind i do not know, but thank goodness for another week in BsAs! besos!

sun, salads, and shawn lichaa

perhaps i should reverse the order of the title, since shawn's arrival in BsAs resulted in salads and sun for PP. gracias shawn!

meals with shawn go like this: meet at lovely restaurant, order food, then learn about how unhealthy everything i ordered is. conclude with dessert and a live reading from a chapter in "Good Calories, Bad Calories." here we are doing all of the above at Cabana Las Lilas in Puerto Madero. it turns out that the 5 cheese-filled bread rolls i had are considered "bad calories."

after lunch, shawn went to work and i went to walk all over puerto madero -- muy bonito

in the lobby of the hilton puerto madero

then we met at a delicioso italian restuarant for dinner. shawn thankfully left "Good Calories, Bad Calories" at home, and we split a bottle of malbec, pasta and chocolate cake con helado. yum!

after dinner, we went to a tango show in la boca at "el viejo almacen."

to quote shawn: "they are so disorganized"

but, the show was entertaining enough. here are some moves that i thought shawn and i could easily handle. until i pulled a thigh muscle.

making our own souvenir

here is what i learned when i woke up at a decent hour saturday morning -- argentine saturday morning tv consists of macaulay culkin and ...

the jackson 5 on vh1. throwback!

after rocking out to my favey jackson 5 hit -- "oh baby give me one more chaaance," ya know -- shawn and i went to brunch at cuteville la sirop folie in recoleta.

to quote shawn: "these are the best eggs of my life!"

we went for a walk in the barrio, and shawn spotted a pile of "peras gigantes."

apparently his pera gigante was delish.

and here i am having finally gotten a banana liquado. ian -- SO GOOD!!

shawn sadly had to go back home before i could take him on more adventures. leech, you rock guapo! te echare de menos. y discubrire que es una amarena.

in conclusion, i couldn't resist:

xoxo!