Friends, Fun and the First Spring Weekend in Buenos Aires

Ah, spring. It just makes everything seem so much more vibrant.

We're enjoying that first full weekend of real spring weather here in Buenos Aires, and it's magnificent. It happens to coincide with the beginning of the annual city-wide arts festival which culminates in next Saturday's Museum Night during which most of the museums are free, open and packed until 2 in the morning.

We started the weekend by spending Friday evening with our friends Alan and Carito. Alan is a blogger and tour guide here, and Carito is a Japanese Peruvian with a master's in advertising from the University of Virginia. She spent a year working for Ogilvy and Mather, the huge international marketing firm, in New York and then transferred to their office here. She's been in BA for three years now and her team is working on the Latin American ad campaigns for Kimberley-Clark's feminine products. The first night I met her (a few weeks ago) we had a fun conversation about the whole "white pants" approach to advertising tampons and how they were coming up with a new approach. Honestly, I've never been so excited for a tampon commerical to be aired!

Anyway, the four of us wandered the streets during the Gallery Night event, searching in vain for the elusive complimentary champagne (we should have come earlier, I guess) and after squeezing into a few galleries and admiring some whimsical paintings and what I like to refer to as "sticks and paint" installations, we found a corner restaurant and ordered our own champagne. This proved unsatisfying to the guys, who promptly ordered beer. Anyway, it was a fun night.

Yesterday, we met up with our friends Ana (Argentine attorney with an MBA) and Daniel (an American working on his PhD in history) for a stroll through the streets of Palermo, which were filled with people in their brightly-colored spring attire. It was bustling, with outdoor tables full at every restaurant, the flowers blooming, plenty of art stalls set up in Plaza Serrano. We stopped for lunch at Spirit, then headed back home.

Tom then met up with our friend Edgar (from Malaysia) in ChinaTown to buy some ingredients for a group dinner we were hosting. Edgar and Tom started cooking around 6 pm. Our friends Henry (a recovering attorney from the UK who is now a writer) and his girlfriend Silvie (native of Spain, educated in London, working for a human rights organization here) arrived around 7, and Edgar's girlfriend Katharine (marketing analyst from the UK) got here a little later. We had a lot of fun talking and laughing, and sat down for dinner at around 10---pork cooked in Guiness and coffee, green curry fish/shrimp, spicy chickpeas, coconut milk spinach, various sauces and delicacies and a dessert of lemon cham--which is champagne poured over lemon sorbet. We had a great night together and everyone headed home around 2. Next weekend, Silvie and Henry are hosting the group at their house in San Telmo for a Sunday afternoon roast on the terrace.

This morning, Tom and I got up around 8 and headed to our favorite place for medialunas--a restaurant called 1816. We usually go there on Saturdays but missed it yesterday. We read the Sunday edition of the Buenos Aires Herald, which includes a pull-out section of articles from the New York Times. I love Sundays.

Now, we're home. Tom and Talya are watching the rugby game on TV. There is a New York Times reporter calling me later today for an article on expat life. Now it's time to call the mothers and daughters and check in.

And enjoy this gorgeous spring day....