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Published: March 10th 2009
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Parilla
This was the grill at the friend's house. Ok, this is my second try at this. Last time I finished writing and went to save it and lost the whole thing. But anyway it has been a pretty busy last couple of days. I finished the class on Thursday along with the rest of my classmates so we went out to celebrate. It was at Plaza Serrano which was a pretty good distance from my house so I took the subte(subway) for the first time. It was pretty nice, but I still can’t get the ticket to work the first time I put it in. It’s always packed though and doesn’t have air conditioning so by the time we got to the bar I was a little sweaty.
Plaza Serrano is set up as a roundabout with bars surrounding it. There’s quite a few, and all with outdoor seating. It was a pretty touristy place and pretty packed so we ended up inside at a place which provided enough room for all of us. We went to two different bars down there but I was much more pleased with the second one. It was there that I found a manhattan on the menu for the first time. My Spanish
eating
Everyone around the table before eating is getting better, but definitely not up for explaining drinks, I was happy to have it on the menu.
Friday night was our graduation dinner. The dinner involved a salad bar followed by slabs of meat being brought out and shared between groups of four. The amount of meat we were given was pretty crazy and I happened to be sitting next to two of the vegetarians. I’m not sure what cuts we got as most of the time they are difficult to distinguish, but it was quite good. I also started using the chimichurri sauce that is always served with meat and was pretty pleased.
I left the dinner at one so that I would have some time for sleep before heading off to the bus station in the morning. We met at 7 to try and make it down to Mar Del Plata early so we could start enjoying the beach. The bus we caught was nice. The seats are essentially first class seats. I have a picture which doesn’t quite do it justice. A better example of the size would be when I was playing cards with Caitlin. She sat on my footrest and I reclined the
seat all the way back so I could sit where my head should’ve been and used the middle as a table. The ride was a long one though and we discovered that our bus company was a poor choice. Our bus broke down on the way and turned what was supposed to be a five hour trip into seven. We learned in the hostel that Empress Argentina always breaks down, so avoid it if you come.
But the delay meant that we didn’t get to Mar Del Plata until 4:30 and didn’t make it to the beach until about 5. We stayed for a little bit, but made our way off to the hostel pretty early since the sun was already behind the buildings.
The hostel was only four blocks away and was right on the main walkway with all of the shops and restaurants. It was lovely, but smaller. It only held 20 people and there were 12 of us. Saturday night we went out on the town. We followed an Australian from the hostel to a Columbian reggae bar which was pretty empty, but did have a foosball table. There were four of us playing and we stayed
On the bus
This was what we saw the entire trip there and back. until we ran out of 25 monedas to use on them. Afterwards we met up with the rest of the group at a disco. The disco was the most packed bar I’ve ever been to, but luckily we were able to find our friends pretty easily. When we got in on of our friends was on stage with a transvestite. He was one of the British ones who knows minimal Spanish. Apparently he’d been selected as part of the entertainment and they’d been giving him instructions in Spanish which he had to kind of figure out without knowing what they were saying. I only saw the end of the show but it was pretty funny. After the show had finished the place turned back into a dance club which was filled with 80s dance music. We stayed until about 4:30 before heading back to the hostel for some sleep.
The next day was dedicated to the beach. Unfortunately they weren’t the nicest beaches. The sand was more like soil and it was crowded. We found a spot though and all managed to get sunburn. The beach was covered with vendors selling bracelets and such, but also other people who were
cama
Chris in one of our bus seats. more like vendors at a baseball game, yelling out about the food and drink they had.
The entire town was filled with stray dogs which was odd and many of them would sleep on the beach or in the shade.
The water was incredible besides the huge salt content. We spent much of our time seeing how far we could get out in the ocean before riding the huge waves back. This tapered off a bit after we saw the lifeguards go rescue someone who had gone too far.
Saturday night we went to a friend’s house for a parilla. I have pictures of the grill which is called a parilla and it quite different from a normal grill.
We awoke Monday morning and some of us headed back home while others stayed back for one more day at the beach. Unfortunately we have begun our goodbyes already with one person leaving immediately upon returning and others leaving this week to travel throughout South America.
Now along with beginning to search for a job I will continue saying goodbyes and exploring the city.
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Dawn
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Great photos
Keep the photos coming. We are living the adventure thru your eyes. Hope your folks made a safe journey. HAVE FUN!