Buenos Aires – the capital of beef steaks and tango

Posted by on December 3, 2012

After a flight that felt almost like in a shaker and a landing which tested the plane’s structure we arrived in Buenos Aires.

The portenos (that’s how the people from Buenos Aires are called) do most of the things that are important for them with a lot of passion. And we tried to experience these passions

  • Football – it’s not a secret that Argentinians are crazy about football with their crazy kid Diego Maradona who was voted the best football player of the past century. In order to get a little bit of this passion we went to the stadium and museum of the Boca Junior, the team for which Maradona played in Argentina. The stadium of Boca is the famous La Bombonera (The Chocolate Box). Here you can see the whole history of Boca Juniors and of course a statue of Maradona.
  • Dulce de leche – this is literally the sweetest of all passions for the Argentinians. It’s caramelized milk and almost every cake has at least one part or filling with dulce de leche.
  • Beef – the way the Argentinians treat the beef meat is almost an art. We tried all types of beef steaks with the favorite ones being Bife de Chorizo (Sirloin Steak) and Bife de Lomo (Tenderloin) and they all were knock outs.
  • Tango – we were so lucky because on the weekend was the biggest Open Air Tango Dancing event in Buenos Aires and portenos are crazy about tango so the streets were full.
  • Empanadas – An empanada is a stuffed pastery. In Argentina the most common ones are filled with cheese, ham, pork or chicken meat.
  • Malbec wine – this is the favorite type of wine for Argentinians. It’s not very common in Europe to have wine with mainly this type of grape and it can be found only mixed with Merlot but I will definitely look for Malbec wine in the future as we loved it.

We also took a free guided tour of the city and got some funny info about how portenos are. The people of Buenos Aires are in the top of the list on beauty-surgeries. This is because health-care insurance companies try to get as many clients as possible by offering them one free beauty surgery every 2 years. This is really crazy. Our guide referred to these persons as “Lions” and every tour through the city is just like a safari tour.

We also found out some things about the history of Argentina and why Evita Peron is still considered an icon even 60 years after her death. And then there are the Falkland Islands which Argentinians consider to belong to them. Unfortunately for them the rest of the world has a different opinion about this but all the maps that are sold here show it as an Argentinian province.

Next stop

Montevideo, Uruguay

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