After a slow start yesterday, we didn’t do much better this morning since a Saturday night out in Buenos Aires more or less equates to a Sunday morning out instead; clubs don’t really start until 3am, and people happily stay out until about 7 or 8! We had both had enough by about 5am, though getting to bed by 6 still wrote off the morning. Despite the late start, we managed to have a good afternoon around town, and a typically Argentinian dinner.

Jonty had recommended the Sunday street market in San Telmo, so after a café lunch near the hostel we walked to join the market at the end closest to Florida. The market takes up an entire pedestrian street, and goes on for more blocks than I was able to count. Items on sale were highly varied; from clothes, to accessories such as bags and scarves, food and assorted antiques. There were also a number of Argentinian Tango dancers showing off their skills to enthusiastic tourists. The dancers were a surprising range of ages, with some being energetic young couples, and other much older and slower veterans of the dance.

We walked for a number of blocks before it occurred to us we needed to buy a set of dice after losing one from Marc’s backgammon set on the bus to Arequipa a couple of weeks ago. After approaching a number of antique stalls, we had almost given up (apparently antique dice aren’t cheap – sometimes £10-15 for a set!), when we found a woman selling single dice for 70p each. Mission accomplished, we of course celebrated with a game of backgammon later in the day, which I’m pleased to say I won.

Having seen as much of the market as we felt was worthwhile, we headed back to the hostel in order to work out the best way to get to Palermo for dinner. Palermo is the city’s prime area for restaurants, bars and clubs, and we had been recommended a steak restaurant there. As well as supposedly excellent Argentinian steak, the restaurant offers a happy hour from 7 to 8, where you get 40% off your bill. Clearly this is a popular combination, since when we arrived there was already a queue of traveller looking types waiting outside.

On sitting down in the restaurant we couldn’t quite decide what to order so asked the waiter for his advice. He recommended sharing a large tenderloin, to which we happily obliged, and ordered some chips to go as a side. As expected, the steak was incredibly tender and extremely tasty, with the meat largely speaking for itself and not needing much of the supplied sauce (which was still great sauce). Once finished we didn’t have much time to let our food go down since we needed to get out by 8 in order to enjoy the happy hour deal. We therefore decided to head to a local bar to play the aforementioned game of backgammon and have a drink. I also had a great Argentinian dessert of dulce de latte mousse, which tastes similar to caramel.

This evening we decided to take it easy at the hostel in order that we can actually get up in the morning and do some sightseeing. Currently the plan is to go on the open-top bus in order to enjoy as many sights as possible.

Photo of the day: me enjoying my first Argentinian steak.