...with this city! haha Buenos Aires was so amazing, I didn't write ANY blogs when I was there, so here I am, safe at home in Sebastopol afte 15 hours on 3 planes to tell you a little bit about it. We stayed in the city center for exactly one week in a great hostel called Florida Suites where the four of us had our own privat room and bathroom for only $9/night! ($12 on weekends...) The hostel had a restaurant, bar, movie theater, computer lab, kitchen, and travel agency, basically everything the wandering clueless traveler could ask for.
It is such a gorgeous city - the architecture of all the buildings are really European. It is really clean too, which suprised me. Our hostel is in an awesome location - right off Ave. Florida, which is the main pedestrian street in Bs As. We are like 3 blocks from the Oblisque which is a huge landmark here, and Av 9 de Julio, which is the widest road in Argentina ( 7 lanes each way)!
The first day we took 2 free tours through this tour company Kimmy found online, which offers free tours of Buenos Aires and just makes their profits from tips. The first tour was in the morning and took us to all the historical and important parts of the city. We saw the government building, the pink house (which is where the president lives - who is female!), some gorgeous buildings and we learned a lot of history.Our tour guide was this really cool guy named Gaston (yes I sang the Beauty and the Beast song to him) who started the business himself after receiving a free tour in a European city. It was nice to have a tour by a younger guy who is having fun and enjoying his job, rather than just getting a salary. In the afternoon we took a tour through the same company in the Recoleta area, which is the nicest neighborhood in Buenos Aires full of Louis Vuton (sp?) Gucci, Prada, etc. We saw one hotel where it cost 100 pesos to get tea in the cafe...in perspective a coffee at a cafe in the city center is about 7 pesos!
The next day we went back to Recoleta to see the infamous cemetery where Evita is buried. This cemetery is literally like a little town. Rather than just have a grave, everyone has extravagant little houses and church like buildings where their caskets are. Since they are all really wealthy, it is basically just a way to show off your family fortune. It was a little creepy, but really interesting.
That night we went out to dinner in a part of the city called Palermmo where a lot of the younger people go to eat and party at bars/clubs. We sat down to eat dinner at 12am! By the time we finished, it was already about 130am! We met a couple of people from Chile and went to a bar with them full of board games that you checked out like library books. On our way back, we passed a fun looking club and decided to pop in. We ended up staying out dancing until 7:30 in the morning! It's so weird how quickly time passes by when there are no windows or lights shining through! Kimmy and Lisa actually went to the free breakfast at our hostel that starts at 8am before they went to bed! haha
The next barrio (neighborhood) of BsAs we saw was called Puerto Madero. It is a fairly new neighborhood with really cute resturants and cafes right along the water. We went to this amazing tea shop where they had homemade teas, infused waters, and really good organic food...yummm We also went to an Ecological Reserve which basically looked like the Lagoona in Sebastopol...not that interesting but it was still nice to be outside and walk around. Then we made our way to San Telmo, another Barrio where they have a huge market every Sunday.
It is famous for having antiques, but they also had a lot of other booths and crafts, jewelry, art, food, etc. San Telmo is the old downtown of Buenos Aires, so it is all cobblestone streets and really old buildings. We walked around for a little and then found a little African bar that had live music which we stayed and listened to for about an hour. It was so fun because all the people eating in the restraunt would periodically get up and dance to the music! The main street we took to get home had more booths and drummers and people dancing, so that was fun to see. The whole area had a really good feeling and vibe to it - even though it was cold, there were still so many people out.
The next day we went to the poorest neighborhood, La Boca which is famous for its vibrantly colored buildings and lots of Tango. Although the buildings were beautiful and fun, our hostel told us it wasn't safe to be there past 4 pm, and an artist on the street told us to stay within a 2-block radius of the touristy part of the area, so wer were not there for long. Just took about 50 pictures...(I went a little picture crazy) and then headed back over to see Palermo by day.
Palermo is such a cute bario in the city--full of parks packed with people on a Monday afternoon, and a lake that you can rent boats at and paddle around! After meandering around the parks, Tori and I decided we wanted to go to the Zoo! It was so cool going to a zoo in a foreign country. We saw camels! And all the animals were really interested in the people because they sell animal food for the visitors to feed them, so everytime you walked by an exibit they would come over and 'talk' to you! Also, the barriers for the animals were not very obstructive, and we got really close to some of them! There were peacocks wandering around too, which I didn't like because I am strangly afraid of birds...haha
Our last day, Tuesday, was POURING rain...so we were glad to have accomplished everything we wanted to (except visiting grandpa Edward's old stomping grounds...I guess that just means I'll have to go back!) But we did manage to walk over to Cafe Tortoni, a historic cafe that has been there since 1859! But other than that Kimmy and I just packed and watched a couple movies in the hostel movie theater.
Whew! There's my BsAs adventure in a nut shell, sorry for not keeping you guys updated (if anyone is even reading this) and thank you to Kimmy for letting me use your blogs as cliff notes! haha love you all and thanks for supporting me through my amazing adventure!
I'll try and upload some pictures if anyone is interested.
And if anyone is HIRING i would absolutely love a job! haha j/k
Love you all!
Besos,
Whitney
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