So we walked down to Retiro, the part of downtown BA that has the Irish pubs and the place where they celebrate la noche verda (the green night) for St Patrick. To be honest the thought of 50000 porteños, who normally only drink the odd glass of wine or a beer or two, and the litre plastic cups of beer (un litro vaso a measly AR$10) was less than appealing. When we got there we found that the police had closed the streets to vehicles (as we expected) and the closed off streets were full of people milling about, punctuated with the odd TV camera waiting for something to kick off. At the same time we saw that the pubs had put a AR$25 cover charge just to get in. I thought about proclaiming my Irishness (I can prove it you know) to get in but just thought 'why bother' so we wandered off and found a sushi bar with happy hour (what a great concept) and had their 8 pieces and a chopp (a beer) or a champagne for a very reasonable AR$15 a piece.

So if anyone reading this is disappointed with our lack of party skills, feel free to come on over and show us how it's done, we'll be cheering you on while working our way through the unknown ice cream flavours at the local heladeria...
  ¶ 7:09 PM