Me gusta lomo de bife

Joel and I are currently sitting at our breakfast bar trying to do our homework (well I'm taking a break to blog) - it's been a while since we've had homework and it's not easy but we're really trying to throw ourselves in to it (writing about our families). It's been three days now since we started our Spanish classes and things are really moving fast. We finally feel confident ordering empanadas and beers, we know how to ask for places, directions, tickets etc.and we can hold a basic conversation with someone Spanish in a bar (our other piece of homework for tonight). We've tried to use our Spanish as much as we can but it's still tricky when, after we've practiced and practiced what we're about to say, the checkout girl asks us an imprompto question - we just look at eachother with fear in our eyes "errr... err... Si" - we really need to start using our frases utiles! 

Since I last wrote we've been trying to do some sight seeing and sampling the delights that Buenos Aires has to offer. We visited Evita's grave in Recoleta cemetery, the museum of beautiful art and the infamous floralis generalis (an impressive sculpture in the park). 

Evita's grave:

We've taken the opportunity to go to a parilla to get the biggest and most tasty steak you've ever seen and drink lots of vino tinto (Malbec is cheaper than water here!) for a very reasonable price.

Mmmm steak:

And finally, we've also managed to master the Subte in rush hour, not too different from the London underground - feels like home already!

Empanadas - a staple diet!

Having got settled in to our new apartment yesterday, we decided to go for an explore around the local area. It works out that if we walk 10 minutes from our apartment we are in the Palermo Soho area with its trendy boutiques and creative cafes and this is where we discovered our new love - empanadas with cervezas - YUM! If you've not tried empanadas before, I would describe them as little parcels of deliciousness which contain either carne (meat) or such delights as spinach and mozarella and, at £2 each in even the nicest bar, I think we're going to be eating a lot of these bad boys.

Palermo Soho:

Empanadas:

 

Having got our fill, we decided to head off in the direction of the local supermarket to stock up on supplies. Turns out supermarkets here aren't as cheap as we expected, most items are of similar prices to the UK. In fact the cheapest things to buy are steak (any cut you can think of in abundance), beer and red wine - hmm, I think I know what we'll be eating for the next month at least then... 

Steak Shelf:

Our only problem now is that we're getting by on just 5 words of Spanish - hola, gracias, por favor, dos and cervezas and it doesn't seem to be going very far, next stop Spanish lessons...

Hola Palermo!

After a long flight, two cheesy movies, two plane meals and a snooze we finally touched down in buenos aires. First job - find a taxi. Being quite out of it from the flight, we didn't want to mess around looking for taxis, so we just went for the first one we found. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a 20 stone stoner with massive red eye who kept falling asleep on the motorway. As our Spanish is still in its early days, Joel just kept shouting "hey" in the guys ear to keep him awake - luckily this worked and we arrived safe n sound at our apartment in Palermo. 

Once we managed to find the right place, we met Jose the owner. What a lovely guy - he'd bought us milk, cornflakes and fruit for breakfast with the days paper and proceeded to show us around the neighbourhood. We found out some insider tips on where to get good coffee, great steak (everywhere apparently) and how to get Joel local tickets to the Boca games.