Argentina: Buenos Aires

Sorry for the long long silence! While Elle has been up to her ears in sawdust I have been working horribly hard and neglecting my sisterly blog-writing duties.

Here is Buenos Aires at long last, written up by area... (with an extra section on steak of course!)

San Telmo

Looking back to when I landed, I didn't really know what to expect but found a tornado of scribbled graffiti covering just about every building within arms reach. San Telmo is a picturesque example of this, and would be a great place to stay (there are a lot of cheap and cheerful hotels around there). It is a largely derelict but charismatic area housing the bulk of Buenos Aires antique / vintage shops which mostly sell overpriced tat but makes for many amusing wanderings. On a Sunday the streets fill with tourists as the Plaza Dorrego market sets up stalls all over Defensa.

lovely little book shop sign

Also in San Telmo is a great Mexican café called Banco Rojo which blasts out very loud music and sells the most delicious tacos and barbecued pork. It is pretty cheap and the perfect spot for lunch on the go. 

Tacos 'especiales'

Tacos with BBQ pork

Villa Crespo

Our favourite area, and where we spent most of our time was Villa Crespo. There you can stay at Pop Hotel for amazingly cheap prices in quirky 'pop art' decorated rooms, eat fantastically well, and dance Tango for Argentinian prices. The tango really was the highlight for me thanks to the wonderful teachers at El Esquinazo (Tango Estudio)
who I had daily private lessons with.

Our room at Pop Hotel

After discovering Pick Up the Fork blog, we were guided through the area's best food offerings and found some real gems. There are two great places for breakfast, Cafe Crespin (photographed below) and Cafe Crespo which was sadly closed while we were there but is open again now. Crespin serves up hearty breakfasts and delicious pastries and had us coming there almost every day. 

There are plenty of great places for dinner but our favourites were Espera Ascura -  great and unbelievably cheap tapas restaurant with mouth watering burrata, and a Venezuelan restaurant called Arepas Buenos Aires which I forgot to photograph, oops!

Recoleta and Retiro

The other neighbourhoods we explored a little were Recoleta and its neighbour, Retiro. These host a couple of our favourite cocktail bars of the trip. The first, Floreria Atlantico in Recoleta, is a well-hidden speakeasy. You arrive at Arroyo 872 to find a flower and wine shop which you pass through an and open up a secret door leading, downstairs, to the bar. Down below, you find a dimly lit, narrow cellar filled with young, well-dressed Argentinians. 

Outside the bar

'The flower shop'

The food was, with one exception, fantastic. We started with some beautifully marinated anchovies, then had the special of griddled ram steak with sweet potatoes and a berry sauce. The meat was divinely tender and flavoursome, and the sauce accompanied it well. 

  

Avoid the pizza!!

The cocktail menu is fantastic and listed by the country that inspired them (see France below) – I ended up going for an Argentinian one that mixed Mate tea with some sort of bitters and fruit juice and some sort of Barley concoction which arrived with a lit cinnamon stick in it. 

The other bar worth a mention is Million. Situated in a converted three storey mansion, it really does feel lavish… I don’t know if it was the rather idiosyncratic characters in the bar – a white suited, artfully wrinkled 50 year old with a much younger glamazon lover, a gay couple with the most outrageous hairstyles I have ever seen, and a load of designer glad Argentinian glitterati – but the whole place reminded me of the early clubbing scenes in The Great Beauty. It is a fantastic place for people watching, and sampling interesting cocktails too.

Steak!

Now I can’t finish a post about Buenos Aires without mentioning steak. We tried a few places but came to the conclusion that Parrilla Pena was the best. We had the ‘lomo’ – tenderloin which was - as it should be - tender, flavoursome and perfectly cooked. Not only that, their chimichurri was also the best we have had – it had a stronger herbal flavour than most, going heavy on rosemary and oregano, as well as a slightly sweet, vinegary sharpness – my mouth is watering just writing of it. And they know how to do a decent salad – a skill that we have found sadly lacking elsewhere in Argentina. The photos aren't anything special but God did it taste good!

One sleep to go...

There is little proper house progress to report on other than some serious (and seriously boring) architrave and skirting painting but there are some things in there now. It's back to chaos of a different kind as we smashed up the wardrobe in transit and therefore have nothing to unpack clothes in to (oops).

Anyway, couldn't resist a little share so I ran round the house snapping the mess on my camera's auto mode - well there's no point in dressing up the situation eh. One sleep to go before we sleep there! Hopefully there will be a bed to sleep in by then.

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Late Night Update

Zzzzzzzz... I've lost track of the countdown, because I barely even know what day it is. 

I really need to start getting some more sleep. Last night my wonderful mum and grandmother came to help 'final preparations' for the move. It does not look like it's ready, but I guess it is because it has to be. My stuff is going in on Sunday no matter what state the house is in. Excuse the phone snaps.

The positive news is that the kitchen worktops have been oiled, the tiles are in the fireplace and the bathroom has even been cleaned! :-)

Dinner was a tray bake eaten off the old garden furniture and my stepladder in amongst paint chaos. Eep! I'm looking forward to getting back into cooking in my new kitchen very soon!

Wish me luck!

High Tiling Stylin'

So, we're 100% moving by next Tuesday. There is 6 sleeps to sleeping in le maison - It isn't sinking in yet but that's probably in part due to the fact that it still looks totally like a tip. (Skip arriving today - wish us luck). 

Monochrome and green making a lovely contrast.

With that in mind, I'm distracting myself with tiles. Mostly our tiles are in now. The bathroom, which you are probably bored by already has a grey slate effect floor (slate effect is easier to clean than slate and far cheaper). I bought mine here at 50% off which is an incredible price for porcelain rather than ceramic - buy porcelain for floors if you can as it's far harder wearing than ceramic. Our walls are black and white victorian brick effect. White walls with a dividing line to break up the room visually and to use as skirting against our 'Avon' blue wall. 

The kitchen was a little more spenny because I'm ashamed to say that I used Topps Tiles. Ashamed because they are undoubtedly overpriced and wherever I can, I've bought trade. 

In any case, I fell in love with these Mexican Talavera tiles on Ebay and then decided that the importation charge was simply too high and the different sizes would make grouting them a nightmare. Instead I found these which are a happy alternative and far easier to get hold of. 

Something that you should always think about with tiles is what's going to offset them. When you're choosing everything seems like an extreme design decision, but too often tiles just fade into the background and you end up not noticing them. For me, the metal accents in the room was the important factor in decision making. I was happy with a monochrome bathroom because I chose gold accessories to create the more unusual Victorian effect that I was after. In the kitchen, I have my chrome range cooker and chrome accents throughout which looks lovely with the cold blue tiles and warm wood tops and floors.

Victorian stlye  inspiration - I would have loved to have exposed copper pipes too but it wasn't practical.

My kitchen sink tap - sink is taped up for painting.

Gold accents in the bathroom - walls shown before they were painted.

Finally, having gotten the chimney swept by a lovely company in Green Lanes, I was ready to sort out the fireplace. We have the original cast iron insert still but no surround. It didn't take long to find a nice simple carved pine on again from Ebay and only in Archway (just up the road). I spent a grand total of £25 on this which was pleasing. 

I had already had some Victorian traditional quarry stone tiles laid which contrast beautifully with the wooden floors. I had quite a bit left over at the end of this and during the renovation process the terracotta front step tiles had been smashed, so I used the rest of them up like this - a nice motif for the ground floor. 

When the pine surround arrived, I felt that it needed some colour and was inspired by the green tiles that you seen in old English pubs. Again, all very Victorian. These are being put in today so watch this space. For now - the thing

Inspiration - Victorian green fireplace.

The tube underpass in Kensington.

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From the windows to the walls

So we're kind of on track... the 10 day countdown takes us to Saturday but things will only go into the house from Sunday and then we will be half camping until Tuesday. The end is in sight.

Since this moment two weeks ago, sat outside Chris Stevens on the Holloway Road, I have had paint somewhere on my whether it has been my clothes, my hair or my eyelashes. Paint now seems like part of how things should look - white speckled faces are having a moment right now. 

 So mum came to help us pick up paint in her car. I wore my sisters old jeans from when we were teenagers which conveniently mirror 'boyfriend' jeans and look great with paint on them. I also wore these lovely new kicks so that I could feel like a human before and after the painting. It worked, kind of... mainly they are still paint free unlike the rest of me.

We bought A LOT of paint. In actual fact we bought a fair bit we didn't need but don't underestimate how much you'll use. Things that we learnt:

1. When you paint straight on to plaster, you have to use a 'mist coat' - emulsion mixed with water, which you whisk using a paint whisk and a drill. 
2. Undercoats should be done in white emulsion too for walls because it's cheap.
3. Wood work needs undercoats in either a water or oil based undercoat or primer depending on whether they're interior or exterior. 
4. Coloured paint is expensive. 
5. Eggshell is expensive.
6. Gloss is a nightmare to paint with. Only use it if you really need to.
7. Emulsion comes off. 
8. Oil based stuff doesn't. 
9. If you need any advice on where to buy, I would really recommend Chris Stevens because they're good guys and it's cheap all year round. 
10. We have some amazing friends - a big thank you to Georgie, OJ, Anna S, Anna B, Kate, Pete, Drew and of course Mum and Granny for helping us out. 

You need suitable covers for the whole floor and more masking tape than you'd think. 

The satisfaction of finishing a room is indescribable. Especially when you're lucky enough for it to look exactly the way you had imagined it. Remember, I had to choose everything all at once before bits were in so it took a lot of bad drawings and leaps of faith to get here. 

You can make any old bashed up wooden door look 'shabby chic' with an undercoat and a lick of eggshell. 

My first new piece of furniture arrived because I needed a stepladder so I got to buy my first vintage piece. It's a 1950s wood and metal step ladder and it has been a good friend over the last few days. The little steps fold over underneath too for when it's just used as a seat. Sooo sweet.

More tomorrow... 

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