buenos aires

we´ve been spending our days choosing one or two neighborhoods to explore. we´ll have a little list (maybe 2-3 things) of places to see, you know the “sights” and then we´ll just wander around a bit.

day one was el centro and florida avenue.

busy, busy downtown-ish neighborhood. lots of shopping. a million banks (and every single one of them with a line out the door… not sure what the deal is with that. maybe someone can tell me?). huge fast food joints (the biggest mcdonalds and bugerkings i´ve ever seen. and the nicest.)
this is a picture in a BK:

we spent day two around plaza de mayo:

…where we saw argentina´s white house (but theirs is a pink house – casa rosada):

and then we spent the afternoon in pueto madero, a really nice area of town where we had a really, really, really good steak. we also went to a big, big park there (i forgot the name… something ecologico or such) and spent some time watching little kids play soccer (michael) and eating a giant ice cream cone (me).

yesterday (our third day) we spent the morning in la recoleta at the cementerio de la rocoleta which was nothing like we´d imagined. it is a very old cemetery that has some of buenos aires most famous and welthy dead people. we read that the tombs were elaborate and i´d imaged it to look like the hollywood forever cemetery in los angeles, which is a big grassy cemetery with very elaborate, expensive tombstones. but this cemetery had no grass at all. it is just wall to wall tombs. as in little mini-buildings. it seems most contain entire families. you can peak in the windows into the interiors which look like little micro-churches with alters and stainglass windows. then you´ll see a hole in the floor with a staircase leading down into a crypt with the bodies of the family members.

evita´s tomb:

(yeah, i took a lot of pictures are the cemetery…)

it was really pretty, and creepy, and weird all together.

the tombs are so elaborate. i cannot even imagine what they would cost. but then also, some of them have been more or less abandoned. you can tell someone cared about these dead people once. enough to spend a fortune on this resting place, but aparently whoever cared has also died, or moved, or stopped caring.

after the cemetery we went to a nearby garden where i got eated alive by bugs. 🙁

today i am super, super itchy.

this morning we went to the big, main bus station to make reservations for our next trips. the first being iguazu falls and then back to buenos aires. and then we´ll go from buenos aires to a town in uruguay (colonia de sacramento), and then back to buenos aires. and then finally, we leave buenos aires for good and head south to mar del plata (a beach town on the coast).

after the bus station we came to la boca (where we are right now) and took a tour of the boca junior´s (the very beloved soccer team) stadium.

this is michael at the desk where they hold the press conferences after every match

afterward, we walked around the neighborhood for a bit and had lunch at an outdoor cafe.

…and hung out with the many, many stray dogs.

(these dogs were actually friendly. they were just playing. this is just to scare our moms.)

lots of pictures of la boca:

(i think this guy looks like bill cosby)

so that was a (really thourough) play-by-play of our days here so far!!

here´s some other random thougthts while i wait for the pictures to upload to flickr so i can add them to this post.

my spanish is improving.

the difference between today and just 3 days ago is amazing. we were so unprepared when we first got here. i hadn´t really reviewed much of anything. but trial by fire, and we are now able to get around and order meals and find buses just three days later. at least to a degree…

there is very, very little english spoken here.

basically every conversation begins like this:

me: habla ingles?

argentine: no

me: (deep breath) okay.

and then i launch into my broken spanish until we are all on the same page. (well, me and the argentine are on the same page. michael remains very lost.)

also, it seems even when someone claims they know english, the really dont. or they know a little but even less than i know spanish, so we end up switching to spanish anyways.

today, on our tour of the stadium, the tour guide would go on and on for 15 minutes in spanish, and then come over to the 4 english speakers in the group (us and two guys from england) and “repeat everything she just said” but for some reason, in english, it was only about 30 seconds worth of info. hah. also, when i asked her questions, she couldn´t understand my english at ALL. and i´d have to ask in spanish, and then she could answer in english.

…

there are lots and lots of parks here in buenos aires. 1/2 of them are fithy dirty, but the other 1/2 are nice and are really good for breaks from the summer sun.

oh yeah, its summer here. we came straight from atlanta (which was FREEZING) and i arrived with very dry, windchapped chin and cheeks. it was funny to me to be treating my winter woes in hot buenos aires.

…

they eat dinner really, really late here.

i think around 10pm is average, but even at 11:30, on a weekday, people are still wandering into restaurants to sit down. this includes children. kids of every single age (babies to toddlers to grade school and up) are out walking around with their parents or siblings way, way past american kids´ bedtimes.

…

oh yeah! we also went to the MALBA museum yesterday. if you read the comments on my last post, you´ll see that my friend whitney mentioned really good chocolate mousse. soooo, within 24 hours of reading that, we were there.

but then they didn´t have chocolate mousse!! or maybe they did….

the waitress said they didn´t have mousse, but that they had a cake that was kind of like mousse. and it came with pistaccio ice cream. so obviously, i said yes!

and the cake/mousse was soooo good.

also, the big, main exhibit at the museum was a giant andy warhol collection that is in the middle of its 4 month run. ummmm, not so much latinamerican, eh?

it´s on loan from pittsburgh.

it was kinda funny to be in buenos aires and looking at campbells soup cans. and jfk. and marilyn. and the statue of liberty.