Argentina day 2 & 3

Day 2: Saturday Jan 6 con’t

We took a few minutes to unpack, and then headed out to find the supermarket near the apartment. Right on our block there is a small market, but we wanted milk, cheese, butter, etc., so we trekked over to the bigger one a few blocks over. Upon our return, I ate a snack of yogurt, cheese, and a couple crackers to hold me over until the late dinner, and then read/dozed for the next hour. Dad just dozed.

Once we got up, we went to dinner. Dinner here is late. While lunch is at a regular time – 1:00ish, people tend to go to have a “tea” of sorts around 5:00, and wait to eat supper until about 9:30/10. We went out to dinner and had some delicious Gnocci (which I never can find in the states), and shared a bottle of wine. I think I drank more of the bottle than dad, but he was certainly drunker than I. We walked home and slept great that night.

Day 3: Sunday January 7

I didn’t wake up until 9:00. dad had just gotten up a bit earlier, and when I finally got out of bed around 9:30 to shower, dad headed outside to the bakery to buy some bread for breakfast. We had breakfast and left the apartment around 10:30. we walked a few blocks and caught the 93 bus into town. So far we’ve discovered that the bus 92 goes to the bus/train station, and busses 17 or 10 go from town back to here.

As a side note, the greatest thing I’ve noticed is the price of things down here.

$0.25 for a bus ride, $3-5 for lunch, 20 bucks for dinner for two including a nice bottle of wine. In general, I’d say the cost of things here is about ½ to 2/3 the cost of what the same thing would be in the states. Another comment is that Argentina is well known for their meat. You can get steak or beef really really cheap.

Once in town, we visited the Plaza de Mayo district, which is where the famous Casa Rosada (pink house) is located. This is a famous government building that was made popular with Eva Peron and others preaching from its back balcony to thousands of people in the plaza. Later in the day we made way down to the San Telmo area of town. Where along the way we stopped at a street artisan market. We saw a bit of a Tango show in the Plaza Dorrego. The dancers were alright, but what I think kept people’s attention was that they were dressed the part. A suit and hat for the lead, and a sexy strapless dress for the follow. One thing – the girl’s dress was knee length, and flew up when she spun. For heaven’s sake, if you’re spinning for a crowd, don’t wear a thong!

Anyway, we walked some more (we did a lot of that – probably averaging about 5km a day) and then headed home. I want to take a trip to the Iguazu waterfall, and so I tried to get an airticket online, and book a hostel for when I arrive. Our internet connection here is so crappy though, that it kept going out. I will have to try again a little later. I am writing all these blog entries in word documents, and then uploading when I find a short window of connectivity. I am stealing someone’s unsecured network, but this apartment is supposed to have its own cable internet – to our luck, it is down. We have a tech coming tomorrow to take a look at it, so hopefully the connection won’t be so shoddy after that. After a rest for a couple hours, we headed back out to find some dinner. The area we ate in last night is a street about ½ a km from here, and kind of reminds me of the highlands in Atlanta. There are about 15 different restaurants and bars, and it is crowded with people. We didn’t head out for dinner until about 10:00, and upon arriving there, found that there was a 30 minute line for nearly every restaurant. We opted to eat in a restaurant that had a 30 minute wait for an outdoor table, but had available tables inside. Funny how that is. All the restaurants are facing a wide sidewalk, so they have about 15 feet deep of outdoor tables, and beyond that, there’s about 10 feet more sidewalk before you hit the street. It’s really nice to walk around in. At the end of the block, there is a McDonalds, which you wouldn’t catch me dead at; but Roberto told us yesterday that it isn’t a typical McDonalds, that the bottom floor is a “McCafe”, where they serve fancy café drinks and pastries, while upstairs is the “regular” Mcdonalds. Also, they have wifi and jazz concerts on Thursdays. How interestingly different from any Mickey D’s we know. Back on topic. We had a delicious pizza (Argentina has a very strong Italian influence) along with drinks, and ended up paying $12 for two.