Sounds Good on Paper

Tag: dulce de leche

  • Staying in Salta

    I’m relieved and happy to report that we really love the city of Salta and plan to stay for awhile. After dragging all our suitcases onto the wrong bus to Salta, I really don’t want to go anywhere else for awhile.

    Here is my top ten list of what I love about Salta:

    1. Beautiful City – there are colonial buildings, parks with palm trees and mountains in the distance.

    2. Amazing apartment – I’m sure hardcore travelers/expats can live anywhere, but we’re not hardcore.  We need a nice place with the internet, a couch, and big bed.   We got so lucky with the apartment we’re renting. It has all those things and an amazing deck with a jacuzzi.

    view from our apartment

    3. Nice people – the people here are super friendly and patient with my lack of Spanish.   The cheek kiss is popular. I find myself cheek kissing 2-3 people a day. (not including Jeff).

    4. Small city feel. There are 500,000 people here, but horse drawn carts still go down our street. This one unfortunately had a megaphone.

    5. Empanadas (and other delicious foods)

    Humita – tamale-like corn dish

    6. Good cycling for Jeff -Jeff’s found a great group of guys to ride with.

    7. Yerba Mate – we see the gourds everywhere and bags of it sold at the grocery stores. I bought some in tea bags to start.  Tastes good but leaves a nasty green ring in the cup.

    8. Interesting cultural stuff – honestly, we haven’t done anything cultural yet.  But here’s a guy just hanging out in a full gaucho outfit talking to someone on a bike.  I’m sure he’s dressed up for a tourist activity, but you have to love the pants.

    9. Wine – The town of Salta is in the province of Salta which is known for high altitude wine.  So far all the wine we’ve tried from this area has been good.  We’re hoping to do some trips out to the vineyards soon.

    10. Three alfajores for a peso –  How can you not love a town where the bakery down the street sells 3 alfajores (two shortbread cookies with dulce de leche in between) for a peso, the equivalent of a quarter.  And, the nice older couple that own the store talk to me in Spanish every time I go in.

    What I don’t like about Salta:

    1. Rain – turns out January and February are the rainy season.  Seems like we left Seattle’s rainy winter to go to Salta’s rainy summer.  Ironic isn’t it?

    2. Lack of Veggie Variety – this idea of eating what’s local is great until you actually are in a place where you can only get local vegetables.  I dream of  a produce aisle filled with vegetables shipped in from all over the world, carbon footprint be damned.

    3. Lack of good coffee – there are lots of places to go out and get good coffee, very hard to buy good beans in the grocery stores.  Instant and robusto beans yes, Arabica not so much.

    Luckily, the dislike list is short, and who knows, dislike #3 might just get us to switch to yerba mate full time.

  • Eating an Entire Cow (not in one sitting) part 5

    We spent our last night in Buenos Aires at the same restaurant we went to the first night.   Here’s what we’ve learned in a month in Buenos Aires.

    • 10:30 is a good time to go out for dinner.  Midnight is not.  They were done for the night, but still seated us.

    • Our Spanish still needs work.  We ordered 3 different steaks. When they came one turned out to be chicken.

    • Steaks taste a lot better than organs (at least the one organ I’ve tried so far).  We got a flank and skirt steak. Both were really good.
    • They don’t call it skirt steak here. Jeff tried to buy a “lomo de falda” at a butcher the next day which made the butcher laugh.
    • Pictures of gauchos holding giant knives should not scare you.

    • You need to use caution when salting.  Salt shakers run really fast here.
    • Dulce de leche ice cream rocks

  • Recoleta Cemetery – Evita’s tomb

    not Evita's tomb

    After almost a month in Buenos Aires we finally mastered the local bus system.  We caught the correct bus going the correct way and got to the Recoleta cemetery in 5 minutes.

    This cemetery is as beautiful as the other one we visited. There are amazing tombs with incredible statues.   This one, however, is smack dab in the middle of the Recoleta neighborhood, so it’s surrounded by tall, modern buildings.

    not Evita's tomb


    The entire cemetery is interesting, but the most famous person buried there, at least for us American tourists, is Evita Peron.    We wandered around in the searing heat looking for her tomb.  I assumed it would be grand, with giant statues and overflowing with flowers and admirers.  Turns out her tomb is quite simple. Her family’s crypt is in the middle of a long row or other tombs.  The flowers and smattering of other tourists were the things that kept us from walking right by.

    Eva Durante Peron's tomb

    Afterward, we stopped for coffee and alfajores (sandwich cookie filled with dulce de leche).  While Evita’s tomb was smaller than I expected, the coffee and dulce de leche lived up to expectations.

  • Eating an entire cow (not in one sitting) Part 1

    Instead of a parilla (Argentinian BBQ place) we went to our favorite restaurant, Annette.  Since we’ve only been here about a week, it doesn’t take much to become our favorite.

    One good glass of malbec and a dulce de leche dessert and you move to the top of our list.

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  • Idea for Starbucks

    Now that I don’t work there anymore I can start pestering all my Starbucks friends with my great ideas.    But for real, this really is a good idea.

    brilliant

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