1. This city is sprawling. When we were taking the cab ride in, we went from flat, sparse land to tenements and commercial buildings in the blink of an eye, and after that it was just city, city, city for a good twenty minutes until we hit San Telmo (where we’re staying).

2. Protest culture is very much alive and well. More on this later, hopefully. But I will say now that the police here were putting up stoically with the kind of shit that would very quickly bring down a tear-gas-and-baton party in NYC – probably because they know how much worse things could get if the people get really pissed off. And there are probably more socialists on any given block here than in the whole of Brooklyn.

3. Wine is very very good and very very cheap. We’ve seen several bottles of $2 wine, and I can’t say for certain but I’ll venture they are of slightly higher quality than your MD 20/20 (or Two-Buck Chuck, for that matter).

4. Dulce de leche is the food of the gods.

5. Everything you’ve heard about steak in Argentina is absolutely, wonderfully true. Sorry, Peter Lugar.

The first. Certainly nowhere near the last.