Given that NYE festivities lasted well till after the sun up, it wasn’t exactly a surprise that the next day was pretty much a wash.  I was dead to the world until Chris woke me up to tell me he was going to get food.  He planned to go back to Magdalena’s Party but I was skeptical it would be open.

Fortunately, his hunch proved to be correct, and he said the place was packed.  However, given the holidays, they were out of pretty much everything except “pancakes and chicken” as Chris reported.  I decided to go with some chicken tacos, which turned out to be surprisingly good.

After doing some blogging about NYE, I fell back to sleep but finally got up for real to go grab some dinner.  I was once again being Debbie Downer, insisting that almost nowhere would be open and that beggars couldn’t be choosy.  And once again, I was dead wrong.

We walked towards Plaza Serrano and it was full of life and open restaurants.  I picked the pizzeria and ceverciera Gonzales, which I had read had good pizza.  That sounded like the perfect recovery meal and the fact it was cool out made their outdoor seating particularly appealing.

The one thing that I did guess correctly is that the service would be even worse than usual.  I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted but Chris was hungry and ready so he ordered.  I decided on their special beer, pizza and dessert combo for only 95 pesos but my order was separate.  That meant my meal actually showed up 30 minutes after Chris’.  D’oh!

While we were waiting for our food, we started chatting with the two guys at the table next to us, who had also been complaining about the slow service.  One of the guys was from Argentina and asked if they had to travel to Northern Argentina to get his ordered empanadas.  Misery enjoys company and these guys turned out to be great company.

The other guy at the table had just finished a 10 month stint as the head videographer for Madonna’s last world tour.  He told us some great stories, such as going to Medellin, Colombia surrounded by hundreds of cops armed with machine guns.  My pizza finally arrived and was quite delicious.  The locally cured sausage that came on it was particularly good.

While I was waiting for my dessert, a guy approached Chris asking for a light.  It soon became clear though that he was some sort of street magician – a deaf one at that.  He proceeded to do about a 10 minute routine using cigarettes and a lighter.  Chris caught part of it on video and I will upload a clip later.

All and all, it turned out to be a very fun night, full of unexpected pleasures, which is quickly becoming part of the norm here in Buenos Aires.