Abasto and Antares

Today I had my first Starbucks in Argentina, mainly because I was really missing chai lattes and you can't really get those anywhere else. I also has a delicious four cheese scone that I really hope they have in the US when I get home. My chai latte was good, but sweeter than in the JS. This didn't surprise me because Argentinians have quite the sweet tooth, and many things, for example the soda, especially 7UP, are sweeter in Argentina than in the US.

After that brief adventure, we went to the Abasto, the biggest shopping mall in Buenos Aires. It was huge! Seven floors, each about the size or bigger than indoor malls at home. It even had its own Subte stop that went directly into the mall. I made a mental note of this for rainy days in the future. There were many Argentine brands, for example Paez, the well-known shoe store that was the first (well, not the first as the gauchos wore those kinds of shoes) to make the type of shoes Tom's now uses, which is why the Tom's symbol has the light blue and white stripes of the Argentine flag. There were European shops, like Zara. There were also American shops like Billabong and Quicksilver. Funnily enough, all those surf shops are very popular in Buenos Aires. 

In general, the style in Buenos Aires is all over the place. It's not a very formal city; most women don't walk around wearing makeup and many people walk around in ski-style jackets that would earn you many scandalized stares in Madrid. People are on average shorter here than in the US, which may explain why platform shoes are very popular here. So are leather ankle boots, tight patterned pants, and ugly men's hairstyles. It's cold (in the 50s), so people are mostly wearing coats and scarves, sometimes hats. At restaurants and bars, with the exception of a few nicer places, you're fine in cute jeans and a fashionable top. At clubs, people are less dressed up than in Madrid, but you still see plenty of tight dresses and skirts or high heels that you would expect in a club.

I had heard that in the last 20 years or so, craft brews had become popular in Argentina. Quilmes, kind of the Budweiser of Argentina, is everywhere, but if you want to get a good beer in Buenos Aires you definitely have to look for it. So today we went to Antares, one of the most popular craft breweries in Buenos Aires. The place was (and is always) packed, and we waited about an hour at the bar to get a table, where we were joined by several friends. I got their tabla de degustación, where you could pick four of their beers to try and I had the honey beer, the barley wine, the kolsh and the scotch. All were good, the kolsh and the honey beer probably my favorite.