Mercado de San Telmo

Lindsay and I live right next to the widest avenue in the world, Avienda 9 de Julio. We have yet to cross the entire thing without having to stop at one of the islands in the middle and wait for another green light. Generally, Buenos Aires looks like a European city. There are many historic buildings that are very pretty, a few modern skyscrapers made of all glass, and some not-so-nice looking concrete block buildings. Red brick is also a fairly common building material, for example the restaurants and cafes in Puerto Madero were made of brick. Some of the smaller streets are cobblestones (adoquines en español), but many of the streets are wider than you would find in European cities, except in San Telmo, the most historic district in the city.

Today Lindsay and I met Lucía and her friend Diego at Plaza de Mayo, named so because it was the starting place of the May 25 revolution in 1810 that lead to Argentina's independence. In the center is the "May Pyramid"' a large obelisk monument erected in 1811 to commemorate the newly independent "Provinces of the Río de la Plata". Today, shops surround most of the plaza, but on one side is a large, pinkish building called Casa Rosada, which is where the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, works. While we waiting for Lucía and Diego to arrive, we stopped into a little cafe and I had tea with milk and medialunas, the Argentine croissants (they are smaller and sweeter). The particular cafe we were at was an Italian style cafe, so they had "chocolate spresso" on the menu instead of chocolate caliente.

We walked down a street from the plaza into the Mercado de San Telmo, an outdoor street market selling everything from stained glass mates (the cups you drink mate tea out of) to fur coats. It takes place in San Telmo, the most historic district in Buenos Aires, and reminded me a lot of El Rastro in Madrid, but not quite as big. There was also a ton of street food: empanadas, roasted nuts, medialunas (the Argentine version of a croissant, it's sweeter, a little denser and smaller) and churros (more like the Spanish churros than the Mexican churros). Street musicians (percussionists mostly) played on a few of the street corners, and we stopped to listen to a band play for a little bit.

We walked for about ten blocks or so, chatting and pointing out a cute scarf or leather wallet, and the street opened into a plaza which was also full of stalls. They were just starting to close up just before sunset, so we stopped into a cafe. There just so happened to be a tango show going on inside (just two people dancing on a slightly raised stage), so that was fun to watch. Lucía answered some of our questions about the menu, and lo and behold "submarino" is a very popular drink where they serve steamed milk with a chocolate bar to be melted to make hot chocolate! I had (of course) been looking for chocolate caliente on cafe menus, but had not yet seen one. This must have been why, and in any case this was a fantastic discovery.