Started as a RIver fan, now I`m Boca!

As the title says, I arrived in Argentina prefering River Plate, but I`m going home a Boca Juniors fan!

Today we went back to La Boca to do the museum and stadium tour of RIver`s biggest rivals,  Boca Juniors. We took an uber to the stadium, before embarking on a short museum visit followed by the stadium tour; I wasn`t expecting too much, but it definitely surpassed our expectations given the day before. The museum was good, although not as well laid out as RIver, but the stadium tour was immense. The girl spoke in Spanish but repeated eerything to us, and two guys from Turkey, in English. She was absoultely brilliant and just wanted us to enjoy the experience. No away fans are allowed at the stadiums for league matches due to violence and the fact someone died a few years back; they also do not allow alcohol so I mentioned Scotland was the same, she seemed surprised! The stadium is way more atmospheric and the fans seem more passionate, they even had us chanting on the tour!

After the tour, we did a bit of souvenir shopping in La Boca before returning back to the hotel. We also bumped into Ezekiel, our guide from El Tigre in one of the shops! He couldn`t help it, he had to tell us some facts about the neighborhood! 

The plan was to go to the Fine Art gallery, but neither of us could be bothered, so we went for a beer instead! After spending the rest of the afternoon blogging, drinking beer and eating salted peanuts, we changed and headed out to Palermo Soho and the start of the food tour. I booked this tour online as it had over fice thousand 5-star reviews!

We started at a place called Picsa, which is the Argentine version of a pizza! The base is sour dough and the topping is very cheesy with both red and brown onions and an olive. At the same place, we also had a beef empenada; it was definitely the best we have had yet!

I think we spent about 45 minutes in the first restaurant before wandering via some street art to the next venue. This time, it was a restaurant called Fuego y Vino Cabernet. Here we started with a choripan (pork sauasge on bread) and proveleta, or fried cheese. The next course was rib-eye, and it was perfectly cooked. We were given vermouth and soda to drink as well as a glass or two of Malbec.



Another 45 minutes passed, and we were on our way to El Preferido; here we started with olives and bread, folowed by Faina (a bit like polenta) and Milanesa, basically a chicken schnitzel, with fries. This was served with mayonnaise, a light one and a hot one, which was excellent! The wine we had was a blend of Malbec and Bonarda, it was quite light but definitely went well with the spicy mayo; it wasn`t as good as Malbec in my opinion! We also got offered a gin and tonic which was extremely refreshing, and also went well with the spicy mayo!


All of the tour were pretty full by now, so we headed off on a wander before the second last stop of the night. We were now also down a member as one of the tour had to leave; normally, I wouldn`t even mention anything, but he was a lawyer from Brazil and he had moved to Argentina for the short-term in order to keep him safe. Turns out he is a lawyer on the Bolsonara (ex president of Brazil!) case and as one of the lawyers had been murdered abut a month ago, they had all been shipped out of the country! Did I mention that he left the tour because the trial was starting in an hour and he needed to go change into a suit before appearing in court on a live stream?

Anyway, hopefully the guy stays safe! The penultimate stop was Luccianos where we were given a chocolate which was pyramid shaped; it had a biscuit base, was filled with dulce de leche and was covered with a bitter chocolate. Its called a conita and is very sweet and very filling!

The final stop of the evening was Antiche, a gelateria, where I had `Frutos Patagonicos` in a tub. It was very tasty and a bit more refreshing but I was absolutely stuffed! We said our goodbyes to the group, waddled out of the ice-cream shop and ordered an uber back to the hotel. It was only 10pm, but we would have an early start in the morning, so we called it a night. 

Another day, another night of a full stomach and lots of red wine....happy days!  

 

 

 

 

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