Buenos Aires actually COULD be the Paris here.

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  Buenos Aires, Capital Federal District, Argentina
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

So this past weekend we went to Buenos Aires.  We left at 7:00 AM on Friday morning (the 7th of November) and took a bus to Buenos Aires.  We arrived about 11:00 AM, more or less, and got to our hotel, the Hotel Carlton, in the city.  I roomed with Sammie.  We got to our first room with 2 twin beds.  Neither of the beds were made, and there was trash all over the place.  They'd clearly not cleaned the rooms.  So we called down to the front desk and requested some help.  They came up and switched our rooms.  The next room was clean, but the air conditioning didn't work (yuuuuck) and so we called down again.  They came up, fixed our air, and left.  We then attempted to use the phone.  The cord had been completely torn from the wall and so they came up to fix that.  It was kind of crazy for the first couple hours.  That day, we went out to eat at a nearby restaurant and then went for a walking tour of the Plaza de San Martin.  It was all in Spanish, very long, and a little boring for us.  Our tour guide's name was Cecilia, and she was VERY good at what she does.   But I think she was too incredibly enthusiastic for a not-so-enthusiastic crowd.  We learned all about the important buildings in Buenos Aires.  Which would've been cool, if it wasn´t so hot and long and a bit boring. 

We basically spent the weekend touring and checking out various barrios (neighborhoods).  On Saturday we went to La Boca (a very colorful, noisy, tango-filled, fun neighborhood) where there were street vendors and street musicians.  It was a lot of fun.  We ate at a restaurant in the barrio of La Recoleta, a very nice Italian restaurant.  Lots of pasta was eaten in Buenos Aires, almost every meal.  After our meal in La Recoleta, we toured through an old cemetery. This cemetery was very cool and we saw lots of old grave sites (I´m not sure what the word for them is, but the caskets aren´t buried-- they´re placed into buildings above the ground... anyone know?) and we saw the grave of Evita Perón (wife of Juan Perón).  If you don´t know who Evita Perón is, she´s an important political figure in Argentine history, and her character was played by Madonna in the movie Evita, where Madonna sings ¨Don´t Cry for Me, Argentina¨ off the balcony.  REmember this?  Anyway, the Argentines love Evita.  We saw her grave and a couple other graves of important people in Argentina.  It was very interesting, and i´m very glad to have gone. 

Saturday night, we got all dolled up and went to see a tango show in a VERY nice tango restaurant-theatre.  We were served a three-course meal, all WONDERFUL food, and unlimited wine.  If I haven´t said so already, I´ve developed quite a palate for the dry red wine here.  It was, in a word, stupendous.  One guy in our program cried because it was so emotionally moving . The whole evening was just absolutely fun-filled. 

Sunday, we left our hotel and toured San Telmo, a barrio filled with artesan fairs and the streets just FILLED with people down the streets, blankets spread out, tables up, their goods EVERYWHERE.  We were given four hours to tour the street, which (in my opinion) was too long.  An hour and a half would´ve been sufficient.  I guess, in my case, it was too long to tour the streets with a head full of pain (my head was pounding all day) and a wallet full of NOTHING.  I had no cash with me, and so was touring the streets solely to browse through the items and not to buy.  My only solace, I found, was to sit on the curb and watch the many street musicians performing.  My favorite?  This family of a young mother, young father, son of about 3 years, and a daughter of about 7 years.  The mother played a mandolin, the father played the guitar, the son ¨played¨ the drums, and the daughter played the violin.  They were AMAZING.  I probably could´ve watched them all day.  The son didn´t actually play anything.  He had a pair of bongo drums sitting on his lap for about a half hour, and pounded them every now and then, but for the most part, he was enamored with the old wooden door behind him. 

Our bus picked us up from San Telmo, and we were taken to a café, where we were given Churros (long, tube-shaped elephant ears) and hot chocolate.  The café was old, beautiful, and apparently very popular.  It was nice, but most of us just wanted to go HOME.  We´d had a LONG weekend, a LONG day, and we were ready to sleep.  We went back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, and boarded the bus for our 5-hour bus ride back to Rosario.  The weekend, as a whole, was good.  The weather was wonderful, and I got to see a brighter, more colorful Buenos Aires than the one with which I was welcomed into Argentina.  THings were no longer gray, the trees were in bloom, the flowers were bright, the sun was warm, and the buildings looked much more beautiful.  Thank you, Mother Nature, for bringing the ¨Paris¨ of South America into the light!

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