Peru/Brazil/Argentina Day 25: San Telmo Antique Market

May 27, 2012
Argentina Day 25: San Telmo Antique Market

We got up a bit later this morning after the late night last night. But still up and at 'em! 9:30 we had a powerfully awesome breakfast of cereal, yoghurt and, of course, Maracuya!! Cab straight to San Telmo and we started the day off right. Today is the day of the legendary weekly San Telmo Antique Market, which was fascinating to walk around and to see all the interesting people selling interesting treasures of Buenos Aires's past. The brightly coloured spritzer bottles were very cool. There were a few Jewish items too which were awesome - a Tallis, as well as little Sephardic Torahs. Pretty cool stuff. For an hour or two we wandered around, talking photos and exploring.

Tango dancer in San Telmo

San Telmo market - Coke bottles

Copper

Signs

Gaucho

Mate gourds

Spritzer bottles

You can take a man and a woman out of Texas, but...

I'll take that Syphon!

Meteoro

Glassware

Tiny Sephardic Torahs

Man and woman Tango dancing in San Telmo

Buenos Aires at its best

Kiss

After wandering the market for some time, we headed to a hat shop and tried on a bunch of different hats, and had an hour-long super interesting conversation with the hat shop owner. Miguel and his wife were so sweet, chatting to us for ages. We covered a lot of topics: Visa/Mastercard fees for small businesses like theirs, government, personal freedom, freedom of speech, etc! So interesting, what an awesome guy! I tried on pretty much ALL of the hats in the store while we were there :) I loved the "Tango style" hats. They had some unusual colours, but classic styles. I loved the original brand, the "first Tango hat", which was a company founded in 1870 and was the same brand of hat that was worn by Carlos Gardel, the famous Tango dancer. Miguel said it was made from "Hair of Hare"! I loved that hat but it was a bit taller at the front. It was a really nice green colour. I almost got that one. But I also really liked their own brand. It was a bit cheaper (made from "Felt of Lamb") and it was a better fit. I went back and forth 100x, trying to decide which one to get!! I finally picked the Blue/Green hat, not the green fancier brand one. Great choice, I really love it! Miguel was such a nice guy, and we took a bunch of photos with him and thanked him for the incredible insight into the lives of modern-day Portenos.

Our friendly hat salesman and my new hat!

The Dome!!!! This is the place we were considering staying in!! Oh man, so cool :)

My Indiana Jones look, with my new hat and jacket!

After all that excitement and awesome new hat purchasing, we headed off to lunch. Ohhh man I love Chimmichurri sauce. It was so good. We got a grilled provolone - like a grilled cheese, but minus the bread, cooked like a steak. Fantastic. I got a Bife de Lomo, which was excellent. I should prob start ordering Medium Rare now maybe! Frank and Jess got some epic pasta.

Grilled cheese (quite literally) for lunch, amazing

More steak

Then off to the indoor market. While Frank and Jess looked around, I tried (unsuccessfully) to find a bank, for about 45 minutes. Haha. I eventually got back to meet Frank and Jess and... Jess had somehow lost her wallet. :( It may have fallen out in the market or something... we were hoping it hadn't been stolen, but either way, the result was the same. :( Poor F&J. This kinda thing really sucks when you're traveling. Thank goodness she didn't have her passport or photo memory card in there. It was only a little bit of money and her cards. I felt bad for them, this happening right in the tail-end of the trip.

We were tired from a big lunch and lots of walking anyway, so it was a good time to just give up on retracing our steps and head back to the apartment to help Jess call her bank and get some things figured out. We chilled in the apartment for a while, taking it easy and making good use of Skype to call the banks in the US. It all worked out which was great, and good for us to just take care of it and handle it before continuing on. Time for a cup of tea, I reckon!

After everything was sorted out, we headed to the subway and towards the Once area. We checked out the Abasto Mall, which was nice and pretty big. I tried a "Freddo" Ice Cream, another one of the recommended gelato places from my friend from BA. It was very good, but Volta still has the crown. Frank was looking for shoes. Eventually we made it up to the food court for our main purpose for the visit... to go to the only Kosher McDonald's outside of Israel!! And it was... CLOSED!!!! Bah!!!!!!!!!!! We weren't sure why... it was a Sunday... we made sure not to come on Shabbos. We left the mall and wandered through the Jewish Once district, which was surprisingly very quiet. (Later, I realized it was the Jewish holiday of Shavuot... so of course everything was closed).

An Argentinean "Ted" from How I Met Your Mother

Apparently Tim Burton owns this store

Kosher McDonalds details

They were closed :(

Another sad photo that the store was closed

We had walked most of the way home from Abasto Mall back to our area in Monserrat, a LONG walk. Maybe 2.5 hours... it was a hefty one. We stopped at the interesting historical place which has Royal Doulton pottery on the outside. We continued to walk back via Congressional Plaza, which was fancy. Some drunk guy tried to invite himself to dinner with us, ugh. We were so tired and hungry and getting somewhat impatient for food... then just about back at our apartment, we saw the restaurants start to crop up. The first one? "House of Pork?!" ugh. haha. Then we saw Ugi's Pizza ("Ugly's Pizza"), a place our friends warned us about and said it sucked pretty hard. Ugh!!

We gave up on all of these things and braved the walking for another 15 min or so to get to that AWESOME Pizza place that Jess and I went to a few days before. Soooooo hungggrrrry! We got to the Pizza place mmmmmmmm. We totally CRUSHED a full Pizza, a Coca Light, and some weird dark Moscato wine in a tumbler glass. It was awesome. A super satisfying dinner, it totally rocked.

After a LONG walk back, we crushed this Pizza

SOOO HUNNGRRRY

We walked back home about 15 minutes, and crashed hard. We chilled out after a long and busy day, and counted down to 12:00... my 30th BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "Feliz Cumpleaños, Miguel!!"

Awesome, excited, and off to sleep.