7th Stop: Buenos Aires

Thursday August 5th, we wake up after a great nights sleep in the comfort of Bethany's apartment. The girls go to class and Laura and I make some breakfast and shower..... a rather long one I must say, being we had a nice, clean shower with hot water and good pressure! We have a long list of things we want to see in Buenos Aires, as it is a HUGE city so we start our sightseeing, but first we start out with coffee from Starbucks (which Laura was extremely excited about)! We explore the area of Palermo, where Bethany lives, and travel to a neighboring area using the metro, which is crazy! It is so packed, I don't how we fit half the people we did on there! Good thing I'm not claustrophobic! We return to Bethany's in the evening and they are not back from work yet so we decide to go blog for a bit at an internet cafe nearby. When we got back from using the computer Bethany had made an amazing pasta/goulash so we enjoyed that with the girls and then watched a movie Laura and I found on the movie channel.

The next morning we head to el centro of the city. Here we were able to check off a bunch of things from our list! We first saw the main plaza, before running across the avenida 9 de Julio, which is a street 12 lanes wide, measuring 460 feet, allowing a great view of el obelisco, a huge monument in the city. We went up in the Panamericana Hotel to the highest floor to get a great panoramic view of this monument and the city in general. We then visit la calle Lavelle and la Galeria Pacifico, along with watching our first street tango performance! We walk through la plaza Serrano and pass street performers and artists selling their art and jewelry in the streets. At sunset we head to the Plaza de Mayo, seeing la casa rosada and la iglesia. We ended our sightseeing for the day by walking down to Puerto Madero, the huge port in BA, where we took beautiful pictures of the bay with all the lights of the boats and la puente de la mujer, a beautiful bridge crossing over the river. By this point it was getting late and we had dinner plans with Bethany and some other friends so we had to start heading back home.

That night we went out for dinner and drinks at a bar called Druid Inn, in el Retiro, with the girls we were staying with and some locals from BA. We had some wine and food, before going next door to a Pirate Bar where we all had our fair share of beers. We ended the night at a club downtown, where we experienced the Buenos Aires nightlife, meaning we partied until 5 am! I could never live here, I don't know how they do it! We hopped in a cab after 5, went home, made mac n cheese and finally went to sleep around 6 am!

We woke up on Saturday realizing why we haven't partied like this much on our trip... it's WAY too hard to get up and do anything in the morning! It was rough, we definitely had a slow start to the day. Once we finally did get going we headed to La Boca. La Boca is where tango emerged in Buenos Aires. It was the cities first port and although being one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, it retains a thriving cultural scene. We pass through a small street market, buying some souvenirs, before entering the brightly colored town. Every building in the area is bright and cheery, with tango dancers on different corners of the streets. We bought our Argentina jackets we had been looking for, grabbed some lunch, watched tango dancing at a small cafe and took pictures with a couple street dancers. After our time in La Boca we tried to visit the cemetary in Recoleta, but it was closed, as we arrived a little too late. We took a quick tour through the church and returned home to get cleaned up for our tango show in the night!

We had booked a tango show through Complejo Tango, a very popular tango company in BA. Our evening consisted of tango lessons, a delicious dinner and a live tango performance. The lessons were so fun! Us girls would learn a move first, then the guys, and then we got to practice together with a partner. We took turns dancing with many partners but my main partner was named Luis. He was WAY better than the French guy I was first with, who had absolutely NO rhytmn! After class we all got a certificate saying we passed class! ( And yes, I did get tested.... Luis and I had to perform infront of everyone!) Class was followed by a wonderful dinner of salad, steak and sorrentino pasta served in the auditorium where the show was performed. We also got dessert and bottles of wine! Argentina is obviously known for its steak and wine so there were no complaints here! The show started right as we got our dessert and it was great! The performers were awesome and the show had a story line that brought us through the different years of tango dancing. After the show we headed back to the apartment and went to sleep. We had done a lot in one day, epsecially after only sleeping a few hours!

On Sunday Laura, Bethany, Alyson (her roommate) and I went to San Telmo, a town filled with cobblestone streets, crumbling churches and a huge Sunday antique fair. We shopped, had some icecream, people watched and spent hours walking around looking at antiques! We left San Telmo in the afternoon and went to check out La Bombonera soccer stadium in La Boca. La Bombonera is the iconic home of Boca Juniors, the biggest soccer club in the country! The stadium was awesome! I was bummed we weren't able to go to a game. Maybe next time I am in Argentina! After checking out the stadium we return to el cementario, in Recoleta, that we had attempted to visit yesterday. The cemetary is a maze of streets and narrow alley ways, and is the burial place of Eva Peron as well as many other famous people of the country. We walk around the cemetary a bit, take some photos, find Eva Peron's grave and get an explanation of how the whole above-ground cemetary thing works. Laura actually goes down into someone's 'tomb' as there is a guy that we chat with who has family buried there, as well as a spot for himself, and he let her check it out. We exit the cemetary and watch some live music in the park, as it is the thing to do here on Sundays! The park is packed! We buy some churripan, a popular sausage and bread combination, watch a couple performances and then head back to Bethany's to get our bags and say our goodbyes as we are headed to Puerto Iquazu, in northern Argentina that evening. We are not at all looking forward to leaving, as it has been sooooo nice staying with the girls, but we need to get moving! We already spent more time here than we had expected to. The girls see us off, as they are laughing by how much stuff we have to carry, and we head to the terminal to get on a 16 hour bus!