bike ride to tigre!!

For at least a year and a half, Mike and Leandro and I have been talking about taking a bike-ride to Tigre some weekend. Tigre is my Coney Island in Buenos Aires, one of my favorite places in Argentina, a neighborhood/city north of the Capital Federal, a weekend amusement town on the muddy brown river delta that includes a zillion green, overgrown islands, lots of old victorian mansions, humble weekend cottages, boats of all kinds, an amusement park, a casino, a giant busy market, a grand old museum in a former gentleman’s club, and a festive, nautical, fantasy-land air that ranges from dirty, creepy and dilapidated to expensive and fabulous.

So Saturday was the perfect hot spring day and we finally did it!! We guess that the ride was 25 or 30 miles one-way (mike’s bike odometer broke after 15 miles), though that included some rambles and detours to see some sights along the way. It was definitely the longest bike-ride i have ever done! but it made me want to do more.

Leandro was an amazing tour-guide, and named all the neighborhoods and landmarks for us as we rode through, took us to see the giant towers at the riverside in Olivos, guided us through some busy traffic on the avenues and some beautiful shady lanes in the fancy neighborhoods. I definitely would’ve been terrified to do this ride on my own, but with Mike and Leandro i felt more or less invincible. I put sunscreen on my nose (and Mike’s nose) but didn’t put it on my back and shoulders, so by the time we got to Tigre I was not only sore and tired from riding but completely sunburned to a crisp and sick from sun-poisoning. oops. It was an awesome trip though, an amazing way to start the spring, a perfect day in the sunshine with friends. And how satisfying to finally go through with the plan! when we got to Tigre we dragged our tired butts to the riverside and had a fabulous picnic of stuffed olives and fancy cheeses on the lawn in front of the museum, until the guard came and kicked us off. Barbaro.

Afterwards we were too tired to ride back home so we took our bikes home on the bike train!

Spanish

my favorite word of the day: POPCHOCLO! = popcorn.
best misuse of english: a billiard parlor named “NEW MOUSTACHE”
Somebody recently recommended the Coffee Break Spanish podcast and I love it! It’s like those learn-spanish-while-you-drive language cassettes, but it’s funner and it’s MP3′s and it’s from Scotland so they have really cute Glaswegian accents. It’s very basic beginner level, and each week there’s a new 20-minute episode covering new material. You can get it as a free podcast from the apple store, or you can listen from their website. http://coffeebreakspanish.typepad.com/
Tune in and then come visit Buenos Aires to try out your Spanish! Actually the Argentinian Spanish sounds different from Spain or the rest of Latin America, so many of the words taught in Coffee Break Spanish will sound a bit different in Argentina. But it’s still fun and helpful for starting to learn Spanish!