Delicacies

Every morning, the hotel brings us complimentary breakfast, which Bryan calls the “bucket of toast.” Breakfast elsewhere in the city is equally toast-centric, or made up of confusing components. We ordered breakfast at a tourist place, and they brought us toast, fruit salad, and two slices of cheesecake. The dinner menus, on the other hand, are rife with omelet options. So it’s not that Argentines have no use for breakfast; apparently they just prefer to have it the night before.

A few days into our trip, we discover the wonder of empanadas. I warn Bryan that they’re hot inside, but he forgets in the five seconds it takes to lift the empanada to his mouth. His face contorts.

Me: Oooo. Is the roof of your mouth still attached?
Him: (swallows) No, but it’s delicious cooked.

Mate

Originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

Mate is Argentina’s afternoon drink of choice. It’s kind of like tea, but you fill the special cup 3/4 full of herbs, then stick in a straw with a filter at the bottom so you can drink it.

It tastes like a cup of sweet clover steeped in warm, slightly diluted bile. I would ingest something like it again only if a pleasant hallucinatory experience were to follow.

Sparkle Motion

On our first night in Buenos Aires, our taxi driver took us to a tango salon in Palermo. After a few hours of watching impassioned couples slinking around the floor, we decided–in a bout of overconfidence–to learn how to tango. There was some red wine involved. OK, an entire bottle.

The next day, in the mildly irritating light of morning, we booked two hours of instruction for each day of our visit, and began our search for tango shoes.

If you’ve never seen women’s tango shoes, imagine the kind of monstrosity fuck-me pumps you’d ordinarily find in a fetish Manga comic book. Now coat them with red and silver glitter, and affix a large leather rosebud to the ankle strap. Voila!

Bryan found a pair of attractive suede-soled sneakers in the first store we visited. I scanned rows of weapons-grade, structurally unsound affronts in varying degrees of sparkle. Did I want the purple and green sequin ones? Or maybe the orange reflective velvet ones with floral silhouettes burnt into the fabric? I finally found some black practice shoes with heels wider than toothpicks, but taller than necessary.

After 16 hours of tango instruction, the balls of my feet are like tender cutlets of raw chicken. You could bread and deep-fry them, and I’d find it soothing. I bought some of those silicone toe pads to ease the throbbing, and they’re so heavenly that walking feels vaguely obscene, like I should reciprocate somehow. I want to tile our kitchen floor with toe pads; I want to stuff them in my mouth. I’m pretty sure they’d taste like whipping cream.