Buenos Dias, Tardes, Aires

Vworp! Vworp! With a wheezing, groaning sound, Lilly and Paul arrive in Argentina... before they left Australia! Unfortunately, our bags are still bigger on the outside than the inside, so it seems likely that we've crossed the international date line.*
* This concept confuses Lilly no end - I think she thought it was something like all those ads you see for Match dot com.
Anyway, taking off and landing at lunchtime was a bit confusing but gave us chance to have a little nap on the plane and power through the day to beat jetlag, which we just about pulled off.
We stayed in the Palermo district on our first evening, so spent the day in that neighborhood. BA gives off a European vibe in both climate and energy - there's a lot of graffiti about, for example, but it's almost a local artform rather than just squiggles and tags. And a clear cafe culture, with lots of people in cafes on laptops. If it were a European city, you might accuse it of being a little run-down, but it feels right here.
Lilly immediately sniffed out a few trendy clothes shops but a pressing need for lunch rescued me. After lunch we visited the Eva Peron museum, which I found as interesting as I would expect - it has a sewing machine *similar to that used by Eva's mother!*, and the English content is sporadic, but apparently she had some beautiful shoes and it's a nice building - and MALBA, the contemporary South American art gallery, which was disappointing: it's pretty rare for neither of us to see anything worthwhile in a gallery, but that happened here. The special exhibition of Cuban art deserves a lack of mention of its own.
On to dinner. BA is cheap generally, but the food especially. The most common form of cooking seems to be to take a piece of meat and grill it nicely, no fuss. Perfect. Although I've memorised the two most important words in any language - 'without butter' - that seems to be the default here in sandwiches. What civilised people. We had a steak dinner at a classic location, La Cabrera {while we were eating, a friend emailed us to advise us to eat there). Bit of a wait, but they give drinks and nibbles to the crowd waiting in the street. Enjoying BA so far - not a city of sights, but a nice place to be.