As we've been pseudo-planning this trip to Argentina, I've gotten used to hearing how cheap everything is.The co-worker who "ate like a king" for less than $10, the NY Times travel piece a few years ago that described dining out in BA as "embarrassingly inexpensive." All of these data points have reinforced the idea that our dollars will go far. Sure, that information is from a while ago, and I know the peso has been steadily gaining ground over the past decade since the economy collapsed, but I've been using the $10 meal as a rough mental average for budgeting purposes. I think this will still be fine, but doing a little blog surfing today I came across some interesting restaurants and took a peek at the menus online. Take this one for example.
Wow. $95 ARS for an entree? At today's exchange rate, that's over $22 USD, which is comparable to what I would pay at a nice Oakland restaurant. Sure, it's a fancy, new, trendy place and probably among the most expensive in BA, but I'm beginning to think we'll be spending a bit more on food, drink, and entertainment than I had originally budgeted. I'm glad we got an apartment with a kitchen!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
More than a decade later...
This trip has been a long time in the making. About 10 years ago, while still living in Seattle, I managed to get C to take some Tango classes with me, and he seemed to like it much better than the other partner dancing he's tried. At the time I was still primarily a swing dancer, but I had done some Tango at a dance camp once, and really enjoyed it. I knew people who organized yearly tango trips to BA and thought it would be fun to do sometime. Still, my idea of a dance vacation was Herrang, Sweden in July. And C's idea of a perfect travel vacation didn't involve dancing at all. We settled on Brazil for our honeymoon, because of our mutual love for Bossa Nova, and I had no expectation of dancing. I think we danced half a salsa during our entire 3 week vacation.
The move to Oakland brought several changes. I tried to integrate with the Lindy community here in the Bay Area, but found that it just wasn't giving me the same satisfaction as I had in Seattle. I did a little teaching here and there, and tried a regular gig, but couldn't maintain any enthusiasm. Within a few years, I had stopped dancing entirely. But during that early adjustment period, I did start doing a little tango here and there, and became much more interested in it.
Around that time, one of my co-workers took a three-month sabbatical in Argentina and came back full of stories about the friendly people and beautiful city. He also effused about the exchange rate, boasting that you could eat like a king, spending no more than $10 on a fancy meal, complete with wine. C was in school at the time, so the idea of a budget vacation in South America seemed like a great way to satisfy the travel urge without going broke. We started talking about the idea of visiting BA on our next major trip - thinking we'd do it soon after his graduation. It seemed like a natural destination for us - we both loved Brazil, and would like to see more of S.America. Also, BA being known as the Paris of South America doesn't hurt.And it would give me a great reason to get C back into dancing tango.
Several years have passed since we decided to make BA our next destination, and we've been doing a little prep along the way. We started tango lessons after C finished school, and have continued in spurts - sometimes missing several months at a time, but we've definitely made some progress. We took a beginning Spanish course over a year ago, and have saved up money (and miles) for the trip. The timing was always vaguely "in a year or so." We thought maybe we'd go there for his 40th birthday, or maybe four our anniversary that year, but then decided instead on New York, which blew the travel budget for a couple years. We finally decided that November would be a great time of year to be there, so we'd do it as my 40th birthday celebration. It's now more than four years since we started "seriously" talking about this trip, and I'm surprised to find myself feeling under-prepared. Haven't we had years to get ready for this? How is it that I can't remember a word of Spanish, and I'm just now starting to read about the history and culture?
The move to Oakland brought several changes. I tried to integrate with the Lindy community here in the Bay Area, but found that it just wasn't giving me the same satisfaction as I had in Seattle. I did a little teaching here and there, and tried a regular gig, but couldn't maintain any enthusiasm. Within a few years, I had stopped dancing entirely. But during that early adjustment period, I did start doing a little tango here and there, and became much more interested in it.
Around that time, one of my co-workers took a three-month sabbatical in Argentina and came back full of stories about the friendly people and beautiful city. He also effused about the exchange rate, boasting that you could eat like a king, spending no more than $10 on a fancy meal, complete with wine. C was in school at the time, so the idea of a budget vacation in South America seemed like a great way to satisfy the travel urge without going broke. We started talking about the idea of visiting BA on our next major trip - thinking we'd do it soon after his graduation. It seemed like a natural destination for us - we both loved Brazil, and would like to see more of S.America. Also, BA being known as the Paris of South America doesn't hurt.And it would give me a great reason to get C back into dancing tango.
Several years have passed since we decided to make BA our next destination, and we've been doing a little prep along the way. We started tango lessons after C finished school, and have continued in spurts - sometimes missing several months at a time, but we've definitely made some progress. We took a beginning Spanish course over a year ago, and have saved up money (and miles) for the trip. The timing was always vaguely "in a year or so." We thought maybe we'd go there for his 40th birthday, or maybe four our anniversary that year, but then decided instead on New York, which blew the travel budget for a couple years. We finally decided that November would be a great time of year to be there, so we'd do it as my 40th birthday celebration. It's now more than four years since we started "seriously" talking about this trip, and I'm surprised to find myself feeling under-prepared. Haven't we had years to get ready for this? How is it that I can't remember a word of Spanish, and I'm just now starting to read about the history and culture?
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Anticipating Argentina
First blog post ever. It's a bit daunting, because I feel like I should be witty or interesting, and I know I'll be neither. This will set the tone for the entire blog, and will most likely ensure that only my family and friends will read it. That's fine with me - the main reason for starting this in the first place is so that I only have to tell the stories once. If someone asks me how my trip went, I'll just tell them to read the blog.
So here goes:
We're not there yet. We'll be leaving in just two weeks. Aside from purchasing plane tickets, renting an apartment, and ensuring that we have non-expired passports, C & I have not really done anything to prepare for this trip. And the list of things to take care of has started stacking up:
So here goes:
We're not there yet. We'll be leaving in just two weeks. Aside from purchasing plane tickets, renting an apartment, and ensuring that we have non-expired passports, C & I have not really done anything to prepare for this trip. And the list of things to take care of has started stacking up:
- New mouse infestation discovered in the house, now that our cat is gone (that'll be a post for another day, I guess.) Don't want to poison the place and have a bunch of dead mice rotting in the walls. But traps need ongoing maintenance to keep them baited and to remove the captured ones. Is that really something we could ask a friend to do while we're away?
- On that subject, we still need to figure out who is going to keep an eye on our house. Would love to have someone live here while we're gone. Reached out to a friend and to C's brother. Haven't heard back from the brother, and it's been a while since we talked with the friend. I'm confident we'll work something out, but not sure if we'll actually get a taker on living in the place.
- For some dumb reason we decided to do a Halloween party this weekend, so we've been focusing on that instead of finalizing travel plans. And then we'll be needing to clean the place up, pull down all the decorations, etc.
- Should we plan a side trip or two? Beach town? Wine country? Glacier? Should we do that before we go?
- Oh, yeah, what about trying to learn Spanish? Could we learn enough in two weeks to make it worth the effort? (Yes, we did take a a 10-week beginner course, but that was more than a year ago. Every time I try to use it, French starts coming out instead.)
- Find a tango instructor before we go? Or just head out to milongas and see which ones we like?
I'm definitely excited about the trip, and I think we'll have a great time once we're there. And we'll have enough time that we can plan some things after we get situated. But still, four weeks is short enough that I want to make sure we don't waste the first week just trying to figure out what to do.
Well, I've squandered enough time on this very unimportant task, and need to get cracking on some of that party prep. I might publish one more pre-flight post, and then the real fun begins.
Ciao!
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