Traveling Gals: Grande. Everything today was grande.

Starting with Plaza de Mayo, the main and grande governmental and political square, we looked for Eva Peron. Well, for the balcony on which Evita gave her famous speech and from where Madonna made famous the song “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”. The guidebook says it’s the balcony that faces the square. Standing in the middle of the Plaza, we saw SEVERAL balconies facing the square. “Which one is it?” we asked each other! It’s a good thing we were not in the Amazing Race and our task was to sing the famous song from Evita’s balcony. We would have fallen into last place for sure. We decided the best way to find it was to tour all of the buildings in the Plaza. One of these will surely mention this significant event and highlight the famous balcony.

Building #1. Carolos Gardel House Museum. Heavy security and absolutely no cameras. Hmpfh. This couldn’t be the building that houses Evita’s balcony. Building #2. Some random building with massive columns. Definitely not here. We discovered a church when we walked inside. Building #3. Casa Rosado. “Could this be it?” we asked ourselves. We don’t remember Madonna singing on a pink balcony. Christie read the guidebook’s description of the building…”legend has it Casa Rosado was painted with a bull’s blood…”. How disgusting. Evita would not speak on the balcony of such a gruesome place! We elected to learn more about the Pink House and took a tour. These Argentineans are serious about security. They never let us stay too long in any given room, quickly ushering us out. We soon realized we were touring the presidential work house and saw all kinds of important things: Eva Peron’s desk, the current prez’s desk complete with a vase of white flowers, the room in which they signed the Argentine Constitution, and a room completely dedicated to the women of Argentina, including one Mrs. Eva Peron. “This is the building”, Traveling Gals decided. Way cool.

Enough of Evita, we were hot and hungry so it was time for lunch and drinks. Traveling Gals began their search for the area’s best empanadas. “The city is strangely quiet”, thought the Traveling Gals. They marched on until they found the address. Closed. Major bummer. It was about this time that Traveling Gals realized that folks in South America also celebrate Columbus Day – everything was closed!

Then we ventured back to the only open restaurant we saw. Sat down, waitied for 20 minutes to catch the waiters eye and get served…ANYTHING. During this time we watched several locals get up and leave after not getting any service…..but we persevered. Finally…order fast before they never come back! I would like a Copa Vino and a Stella Artois. Christie says I must write this “the waiter muttered something in Spanish and we nodded in agreement”.

He returned another 10 minutes later with our drinks…..our GRANDE drinks. No seriously, he returned with a 953cm3 bottle of Stella, or close to a liter of beer, and a whole bottle of wine! “Shit, we’ll be here for a while” we thought and we really weren’t sure we wanted to! We then waited for our pizza which turned out to be tomatoes, eggs and spinach…interesting…..but not terrible.

We ate, drank more than we needed too and left with out leaving a tip. Neither one of us can remember the name because we don’t care!

Then it was back home and nap time before dinner.

Dinner was at Don Julio’s a block away from our apartment and it was a classic Parilla…or Steakhouse. “This should be good”, we thought, “ no…this should be GRANDE”! We ordered a lovely bottle of Malbec, ate the most delicious empanadas (finally), shared a wonderful salad and then the meat arrived. Each of us was served enormous steaks, GRANDE steaks. We swear Anna pointed to the “thin” steaks on the menu. Our waiter must have misunderstood. Our steaks were at least an inch and a half thick. Good grief. Our grande bill? Less than 300 pesos which is roughly $75 US.

Ciao for now.