Week commencing Monday, 8 September 2025
Quantified Self
- This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 6/7 and Move 7/7. (96%). Holiday time. Total steps: 105,183
Life
- We’d done twilight check-in. We woke at 3 am. All was on plan until the email explained our first flight (to Madrid) was cancelled and everything had to be changed. We opted not to go back home, but spending an entire day at Heathrow was harder than I expected, even with lounge access.
- Related, I imagine if I were in corporate espionage, I’d sit in the BA lounge listening to all the calls.
- The flight stopped in Rio, where most of the passengers disembarked, while only a few continued. Somebody had left duty-free items in the overhead locker above me, and they had to be removed before we could depart.
- At baggage collection, it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to get a suitcase. I was remarkably calm. They were remarkably good at getting it to me.
- Day one: after clothes shopping, dinner was Parrilla Don Julio, a steak restaurant ranked number 10 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2024. It’s obvious why. This will not be a meat-free holiday.
- On day two, even though we’d just arrived, we crossed the Río de la Plata to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. Easy to travel. Beautiful old town.
- Thursday: a tourist bus ticket took us to La Boca, specifically El Caminito, the little street that has become one of Buenos Aires’s most distinctive sights. The corrugated-iron houses, splashed in bright reds, yellows and blues, felt like they had been painted to lift the mood of anyone passing by.
- Dinner was a tango show at La Ventana — powerful, elegant dancers paired with live musicians, singers and even bursts of Argentine folk. We were surprised by the Don’t Cry for Me Argentina portions, having been told the country didn’t really take Andrew Lloyd Webber’s interpretation of its history to heart.
- Birthday Friday was a lot of great things, but the chef’s counter at Fogón Asado — a twist on Argentina’s traditional barbecue, with about ten guests seated around the open fire as each cut of meat is prepared in front of us — was a real highlight treat. It’s very up close and personal with the chef and the sommelier. Luckily, they were both lovely.
- Saturday: a flight south where my luggage kept pace with me. It wasn’t beef here; it was lamb.
- The week ended with Los Glaciares National Park in Argentinian Patagonia. Stunning.
- If travel teaches anything, it’s that a lost suitcase is just the first chapter of a much better tale. Argentina might have stolen my heart.
Media
- After boarding, before sleeping, I watched The Salt Path and The Amateur. They passed a few hours of the flight to Buenos Aires.
- I am not reading as much on this holiday as I had assumed. On the 14-hour flight I read nothing. At least I’ve started The Janson Directive, and it’s a meaty enough book that it might last the trip and mean the other books were unnecessary baggage.