Conociendo la Ciudad y Celebraciones
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2008
1
10
13
Trip End
Ongoing
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Friday, July 4, 2008
I walked the ENTIRE city up and down, trying to find a replacement jacket but so far, nothing strikes my fancy.. Yesterday was an excellent day all around.. I met up with Nathan, Cati, Andrew, Julia, and Ben in Cafe Tortoni, which is probably the most famous café in Buenos Aires. It's the only cafe to be declared a historical landmark in this city and it hasn't changed its style since the early 1900s (dont know exactly when it was established). Lots of famous people have dined there, and it's almost like a little museum. After brunch, we went to a tour of Palacio Barolo, which is a really beautiful building in the city that was constructed based on Dante's Inferno
catherine and I at Martin's birthday party
. We rode two old-school, 1920's, Tower of Terror-style elevators to the Torre (tower), which is supposed to be heaven. From there, we had an excellent view of the entire city, though it was cloudy and foggy. It was actually kind of cool and gave the city a surreal feel. Afterwards we descended to the 4th floor, which was purgatory because you had a view of the bottom floor (hell) but no way of going up (to heaven). The lobby was hell, and the lamps had little devil figures and hellish designs. It was really cool. After that, we had some time to kill, so Andrew took us to this cafe that used to be a lechería, or a place where you'd buy milk. All the walls were white tiles and they had very good submarinos. We ended up at Conreso, the national congress, and took a tour of the building. It was really beautiful inside, with materials from all different countries (marble from Germany and Belgium, crystal from Argentina, wood from different countries that I don't remember now..) and had some interesting history. There was a pink room that is now called the Eva Perón room because she used to host female politicians and visitors there. We also got to see where the Senate meets.. I wish the tour had more history, because that's more interesting to me than the architecture, but it was a good way to spend an hour anyway.
View from "Heaven"
Afterwards I took a nap and got ready for the festivities because it was Nathan's birthday. For dinner, I went to the student residence because we got a wave of new Roadies for July. There were SO many people there. I had wine, chorizos, hamburgers.. it was sooo delicious! It was also a lot of fun to hang out with the Road staff and catch up with some of the peeps that I hadn't seen in a while..
At around 1, I went to go meet up with Nathan and friends at a boliche called La France. Since it was his birthday, we all got in for free, which was awesome cause drinks were only like 3 pesos each! We danced a lot and had fun, though I got tired SUPER fast and just hung out on the couches with Mark for a while. I kind of thought about how I was jealous of the fact that he COULD just go to a boliche to dance without trying to meet people because he already met his person to love. I guess that sounds silly but it was kind of a bummer at the time..
I also decided to go to Iguazu with Nathan and Cati, even though I feel really bad that I'm leaving Catherine behind. It's just that they're leaving next weekend and I want to aprovechar (take advantage of) the time we have left. So now I'm off to the bus terminal to try to buy tickets! Yay!
