18Apr14
Today is Viernes Santo, or Good Friday, which is a holiday here in Argentina. Chris and I, being the nonreligious folk we are, were walking around the empty streets wondering, where is everyone? until we figured it out. Argentina is a primarily Catholic country, although the country also has the largest Jewish population in Latin America.
Many places were closed today, although we did find lots of people over at our nearby park. Among the places that were closed was the money-exchange cueva where we get a better exchange rate than the official rate. Bakeries, thank goodness, were still open.
Last night we took a trip back to the puerta cerrada NOLA for their weekly beer night. She makes fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits and blueberry pie, and her boyfriend and his brother serve their home-brewed beer.
We each got to drink the golden, IPA and porter. We also got to check out where they brew the beer on the roof, which looked a lot like when Chris and I made beer in our house. The difference? They get to sell theirs! (And it tasted better than ours.) There’s a lot less regulation here, so the barrier to entry is a lot lower. We also met a fun couple from Philly who told us about their polo-playing adventures just outside Buenos Aires.
The late night last night — coupled with some late-night barfing from Holly; she must have eaten something — left us pretty drained, so we just went for a nice long walk through our neighborhood today.
This is a photo of a tile — one of many throughout the city to remember people who disappeared during the Guerra Sucia or Dirty War. This tile is about half a block from our apartment. We saw another one during our walking tour outside of a building where people were tortured within the city.
Here are some other shots so you can get a sense of the neighborhood. These are all in Palermo. There’s an interesting mix of old and new.
Tomorrow we have to make sure to go to the grocery store because we’re pretty confident everything will be closed on Easter. Then, Spanish classes start bright and early on Monday…
