J&J Go South 2023 - Day 6 - 20 Steps
Not every day of traveling is perfect and our start to day six of this trip wasn’t what I’d call “smooth.” We woke up fine and finished packing up and went to check out and meet our driver downstairs. After ten minutes of discussing our bill with the front desk (a few things looked off), we finally checked out and joined our driver to take us to the Rio airport. The drive to the airport was also pretty uneventful until we got to the airport. Our driver asked for another payment which is odd because we paid the hotel. He said OK no problem, gave us our bags and we left. While we were checking in our bags at the Aerolineas counter the driver came up to us saying the hotel said we hadn’t paid and so we paid him again. I’m not sure if there was foul play or not here but it wasn’t the smoothest start to a morning.
When that was all handled we made our way to our gate. We thought there would be a Starbucks in our terminal but when we made our way to it, that portion of the terminal was blocked off. No Rio mug this trip. We also were planning to get a quick breakfast/lunch at the McDonalds but that too was blocked so we had to go with a bag of Lays for Jenn and Doritos for me. Not everything about travel is always glamorous. The good news was our flight was on time and we got our very nice premium economy seats for the 3-hour flight to Buenos Aires. The flight was easy, we watched a few episodes of Beef and made it there without a hitch.
After a long line in customs, we grabbed our bags and went to look for our driver. Things, unfortunately, continued to be a little off because he was nowhere to be found. In all of our travel, we’ve never had a hotel driver not be there, but there’s a first for everything. We tried to order an Uber which kept canceling on us so we decided to call the hotel and were able to find our driver ten minutes later we were in the back of his Mercedes and off to the Palacio Duhau - Park Hyatt Buenos Aires. We flew into the smaller of the two airports in Buenos Aires so the drive to the hotel was only 15 minutes. When we arrived we were a little shocked at how run down and poor everything looked but later realized that the airport is located in the more industrial area of the city and by the time we got to our hotel we saw the European influences everyone had told us about.
We checked into the Park Hyatt and received a room on the top floor. We dropped off our bags and instantly went out into the city. Our mission (not too dissimilar from other days this trip) was to go find a Buenos Aires mug. We felt like if we could get one Brazilian mug and one Argentinian mug we’d have succeeded. Luckily there are a lot of Starbucks in the city because we went to a lot of them. The fourth or fifth was where we finally stumbled across a handful of them and Jenn nearly squealed. We grabbed a Buenos Aires mug and a coffee to celebrate this small victory today. We walked around the beautiful streets of Buenos Aires for a little bit longer before walking back to our hotel. This is the first walking city of the trip and it's so nice to be able to walk places again, something we missed dearly.
On our way back to the hotel we decided that we would stop at the hotel's patio and have a drink. Jenn had a very generous pour of sauvignon blanc and I had what I can only guess was a double gin martini. The patio here at the Park Hyatt which is on the palace side of the hotel is something from a movie. We marveled at the beautiful landscaping and architecture. Even as I write this I am still amazed with how beautiful this hotel is. We enjoyed the beautiful afternoon and drinks before going back to our room, taking a room tour, and unpacking for our last four days of the trip.
To wrap up our first day in Buenos Aires we made the ten-minute walk to dinner tonight at Aramburu currently ranked #28 in all of Latin America. We got there a little after 7 PM and sat down to what can only be called a master class in cuisine. This will go down as one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I’m not going to describe all twenty dishes but what I will describe is the experience. When you sit down they ask if you have any allergies and if you want the wine pairing. We use our normal response of “No we’re easy” and did skip the wine pairings and instead ordered a few glasses as we went. From there the team of what felt like 50 people whisked us away for our dinner. We started with six different small bites that were as delicious as they were beautiful. The beautiful crackers to start were divine, and I almost shed a tear with the crab dish (course 14). What was so great about this meal though was that it kept a very consistent pace. The team was constantly cleaning, removing plates, fixing napkins, and making sure each plate arrived to you perfectly. By the time we got to the duck (course 16) we were sitting full and content.
We’ve only done this a few other times but when we finished up the last savory dish (the duck) our remaining wine was brought with us upstairs to another more casual coffee shop-style room. There we had the last four dishes, dessert, and a coffee. There’s something nice about changing locations for dessert, it gives a different feel and the walk helps get you ready for what’s left. I’d say dessert was great but not nearly the highs of the first sixteen courses. We wrapped up this 20-course extravagance three hours after we arrived and made the short beautiful walk back to our hotel. I’m not sure we will eat at a better restaurant for the rest of the year. When we arrived back at our hotel we finished the latest John Mulaney stand-up special on Netflix called Baby J and closed the book on our first day in Buenos Aires. I have a feeling we might spend a lot more days in Buenos Aires in the future.
