Rain & A Steak of a Lifetime

Regina, Saskatchewan to Calgary, Alberta to Houston, Texas to Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hey folks! I´ve arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina earlier this morning (Sept 28th). On the way here me and Dylan, who is travelling with me crashed at my aunt and uncles in Calgary. Gracias Bob and Diane! Friday night Dylan, my cousin Mike and I all went to a sports pub called Schanks and played some pool after visiting with the family.

Saturday we were up at about 930am and flew out of Calgary at 115pm, arriving in Houston 4 hours later. We had 2 hours in the Houston airport to kill, so we walked around a bit as it was pretty big. You know what they say about Texas, everything is bigger in Texas. This included us locating an IPod vending machine, yes you heard correctly, an IPod vending machine, this same vending machine also contained Sony PSPs. After taking some photos of this weird sight, we headed to Fox Sports Skylounge for some Paninnis and some Sam Adams.

A long 10 hour overnight flight from Houston to Buenos Aires was a pain in the knee, literally. And once we arrived we caught a 35km cab ride from the suburbs of Buenos Aires, South America´s 2nd largest city (at 10 million people). After having to stop about 5 times to ask directions our cabby had a stroke of luck and finally located our Gran Hotel Hispano. The hotel is an old colonial style hotel, similar to the hotel we stayed at in Puebla, Mexico 2 years earlier. Once we arrived we had a 1 hour powernap, as we didn´t have a very comfortable sleep on the flight. After napping we strolled the worlds widest street (16 lanes), in downtown Buenos Aires, and grabbed some Argentinian pizza which was loaded with cheese. Hello constipation. It started pouring so we grabbed some umbrellas and headed back to the hotel.

At night we went for what was the greatest steak I have ever tasted (sorry dad), the beef was so tender and the spicing awesome. Afterwards we explored a bit and took a taxi cab trying to find somewhere to go on a Sunday night but everything was closed, thus we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

Today, Monday September 29th, we woke up at about 1030, and headed out for coffee/tea and toast. Afterwards we were off to Recolecta Cemetary, which is massive tombs of the richest Argentinian families. It is more like a giant maze, but it was impressive to see the tombs. Also Evita (in the movie played by Madonna), whom is one of Argentinas most famous people is buried there in her family tomb. Also at Recolecta we saw a massive an ancient tree, el mayor arbole. jeje.

After Recolecta we headed to a park which included a number of monuments representing Argentinas past. We also snuck into la Universidad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires University) and walked around the dimly lit halls for a bit, pretending to be students. After living the university we came upon a giant flower, that during the day robotically opens up, and at night closes and lights up. Around the flower is a giant pool of water.

The flower was fairly weird to have in the middle of a city, but interesting nonetheless. Well we headed to a local shopping mall were Argentians shop and had some ravioli, I also bought 2 books, Freakonomics and 1984 (both spanish versions to practice).

At night we went for dinner at a local restaraunt and had steak again, this time not as good as the one from the night before. But still decent. After we went back to the hotel relaxed and then headed out for a few drinks.

Woke up on Tuesday, September 30th around 9am, and went for some breakfast. Afterwards we wandered around Plaza de Mayo which is famous for its many historical buildings as well as the Casa Rosado (Pink House)...which our guide book claims to be a museum but we think may not be anymore due to the large contingent of riot police and military guarding it. I have a feeling it was being used for some sort of Government or Presidential event.

From Plaza de Mayo we headed to Puerto Madero (Port of Madero), where massive amounts of new buildings are going up, condos and commercial that would make you scoff at the construction boom in Calgary. There was a really nice bridge that allowed you to cross into the expensive restaraunt/clubs that line the waterway in Puerto Madero. We had lunch and headed back throught the city ending up back at the Galeria Pacifico Shopping Centre, where me and Dylan both bought Christian Dior suits for about $550-$600 Cdn, in Canada they would cost $2000-$3000 depending where you buy them. Only crappy thing is we have to take them with us the rest of our journey now.

Let ya know what happened later tonight...ciao!

---

---