Second day in Buenos Aires, it rained.  Being spiritually connected to the cycles of the Earth (read: super anal and able to read an iPhone weather app), I already knew this was going to happen, so I planned my day accordingly.

Lately, I’ve been feeling really guilty about being a waste of a brain.  Instead of reading books, I’ve been watching back episodes of The Bachelor, and instead of going to museums or engaging in heated philosophical debate, I’ve been getting drunk by myself on the couch in my underwear.  To compensate for this, I decided to spend the rainy day in Buenos Aires trying to kick start my brain cells back into their previous levels of uber-intellectualism.

So I went for a tour of the Opera House.  It’s big deal.  It’s called the Teatro Colon, and it’s just over 100 years old.  We took a guided tour - our tour guide was pretty awesome, mostly due to the fact that he was a smoke show, but he also knew stuff.

Seriously, though, the tour was really interesting.  The architecture of the theatre is really rich and varied, mostly due to the fact that it had 3 different architects over the course of it’s tumultuous 18-year construction, and has clear French, Italian, and German design elements.

  

There is a big marble staircase at the front of the Opera House that reminds me of the staircase in Titanic, back before Leo decided to grow horrible spotty facial hair.  As grotesque as Titanic was, I think every girl can agree that when faced with a big marble staircase, they think about wearing a sweeeeeet sequin-y dress with long gloves and walking down the stairs all sexy-like, towards some adoring man in a perfectly tailored tuxedo, just waiting for him to present you with kisses and a big bucket of jewels or something.

Yes.  I want a bucket of jewels.

Anyways, amidst the spectacular opulence of the theatre, I managed to take a selfie in a floor-to-ceiling gold gilded mirror from France.  Note my super-opulent, dirty-ass Toms and the fact that the panels in the mirror make me look like a hippopotamus.

  

The inside of the theatre space was mind-blowing.  Extravagant and all red and gold.

Right outta Moulin Rouge.

So I felt pretty intellectual after the tour.  I mean, I was able to make pop-culture references to both Titanic and Moulin Rouge, and what is more cerebral than that?  Nothing, I tells you.  Nothing.

So I decided to celebrate by getting drunk.

So I headed to San Telmo, the oldest part of town, and hit a couple of bars that had some “buzz” my our Lonely Planet book from 2008.  The first was Gibraltar, an English pub in San Telmo that has some kind of fame attached to it for some reason because a bunch of expats go there to get all stinky.

Sorry, but it totally sucked.  It stank like smelly old bar… you know like when a bar doesn’t replace their dishwasher for 20 years and there are particles of old rotted food just cycling through the dishwasher and stuck in the crevices of the floor and shit.   And they had a really, really shitty beer selection.  You would think a pub for expats would at least have some interesting beer.

And then they were playing jazz-pop on the speakers.  LOUD.  From the radio.  And it wasn’t like, cool, O.G. jazz, it was full-on Kenny G clarinet jazz where you imagine ladies from the 80′s wearing marabou nightgowns walking on the beach in the video, and some guy in a black silk shirt with the top 3 buttons undone is playing a saxophone with a back lit silhouette in the foreground.

Anyways, so we booked and went to Bar El Federal, which was infinitely cooler.

I consumed 100% of the nuts.

Then I got drunk.

Next stop: dinner.  Dinner in Argentina starts at like 10:00 pm for some reason, and I got pretty drunk waiting for 10:00 to hit.  Just saying.

In case you didn’t know, Argentina is famous for their beef.  They have some magical cows there or something, and the beef is supposed to be spectacular.  I’m not a huge meat-eater, for both ethical and “it’s gross” reasons, but I felt I should experience this in case people asked me about it at cocktail parties.

The concierge recommended La Brigada in San Telmo, which seems to be pretty well-known in the area.   They seemed legit, because their menus are made out of cows.

Why did she recommend it?  The beef is so tender, they CUT IT WITH A SPOON.  Seriously. 

 

This guy seemed pleased.

  

Anyhoo, I said I don’t really like meat, so I was a giant pussy and ordered a salad.  Blaspheme, I know.  I had a couple of bites of the steak, you know, just so I could tell people about it at cocktail parties and/or on a blog.  It was good steak.

I also ordered fries.  FYI, in Buenos Aires, they have something called “French Fries Provencal”, which is essentially french fries with parsley and garlic rubbed all over them.  THEY ARE THE BEST EVER.

Pretty long day, and the rain didn’t really affect plans too much.  I returned to the hotel a drunk, roly-poly mess, full of french fries Provencal.

More riveting travel descriptions tomorrow.