Day 4 - Palermo Soho

Knowing I had to find some shopping for Angela - and fast - we headed to the Palermo barrio on Thursday. Palermo is the cities largest barrio and subdivided into various unofficial districts, each with its own distinct flavor. This day, we focused in on Palermo Viejo, popular for its high end boutiques, eateries and cobbled streets. After about a 25 minute walk on this 75 degree day, we arrived at a little restaurant called Mark’s Deli. The wait was about 15 minutes so we put our name in and strolled down one of the many cobbled streets known for its shopping. It only took Angela one store - Doma - and about 5 minutes to find a leather jacket that she had to have. After the purchase, we headed back to Mark’s for our meal. I had a chicken sandwich with guacamole, which was the perfect contrast to all the heavy meals I had been having. Angela went with a tuna salad with spinach, iceberg lettuce and spring greens, cheese, cherry tomatoes and green olives. This was a very good lunch and the restaurant was very busy providing top-notch people watching. After lunch, we popped into a few more stores, including Chocolate, where Angela picked up a dress and a top.

After we finished shopping, we made a ten minute walk to Museo Evita, the museum celebrating the life of Eva Duarte de Peron, or Evita. The museum is set in a gray-stone mansion from 1909 that was converted into a home for single mothers by Evita’s foundation. The museum took us through Evita’s humble origins as a struggling actress, to footage of her powerful speeches in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans, to her death at 33 years old. It also chronicles the fate of her body after her death, which was stolen and hidden for 17 years before being returned to Argentina and laid to rest in the Recoleta Cemetery. A highlight, especially for Angela, were the original designer outfits worn by Evita that were on display.

After we walked through the Evita Museum, we headed further north to the Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays, a botanical garden with 18 acres of gardens and 5,500 varieties of exotic and local flora. After spending about an hour winding through the maze of this garden, we headed back towards the central shopping/restaurant/bar area for a drink. We decided to pop into a bar with high reviews called Bar 6. We were immediately impressed by the stone, wood and glass decor. We each had two mojitos - they were above average which is saying something for a mojito - and asked for our bill. There must have been a language barrier because we received our bill, with another mojito each. We gladly drank them down, paid the tab, and headed out for some more shopping. I found a shirt at a cool shop called Felix, then we decided to get a quick bite and another drink.

We stopped into a cafe called Mama Macha. Instead of another alcoholic drink, we noticed yerba mate on the menu and decided to give it a try. Mate is a strong tea made from the dried leaves of Ilex paraguariensis, known as yerba. It’s drunk from a gourd (or mate) through a metal, filtered straw. It is made up of caffeine, vitamins B, C, E, B1, B2, B3, B5 and B complex with antioxidant properties equal to that of green tea. Mate serves as the basis for social interaction and people drink it at any hour of the day. Aside from wine, it is the most popular drink in the country of Argentina, and we were glad to give it a try since we’d heard so much about it. The waitress was nice enough to walk us through exactly how to drink it. After about 25 minutes of back and forth drinking - which is the custom - we were done and ready to move on to the next stop.

We arrived at the Don Julio parilla around 10:00, which is a more ideal time for a meal in Buenos Aires. Although the restaurant was packed, we were able to get right in. Don Julio is known around the city as a high quality parilla at an extremely low price, and that description was right on the money. We started out, of course, with an order of provoleta. Out of the three provoleta’s we’ve had up to this point, the Don Julio version was the best. Although parilla’s have many options on the menu, Angela and I both ordered the bife de chorizo for our entree. We both ordered the “thin” version of the steak and were amused that this was still as thick as any steak we’ve had in the U.S. I’ve had the opportunity to eat steaks at many of the top steakhouses in the country, and none of them are any better than what we had at Don Julio. Based on reputation of other steakhouses, I imagine we’ll have a better steak yet before our trip is over, but this was our best dinner yet and as good as any steak I’ve ever had. The fries, as they have been at every restaurant, were delicious as well. After finishing our bottle of Malbec, we grabbed a cab, again too full to do anything other but go home.