First Day in South America

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We finally made it to Buenos Aires early this morning after a 9 hour flight from Atlanta. Fortunately we had both slept on the plane, as we couldn’t check into our hotel until that afternoon and were “forced” to sight-see all day. It was raining when we got in, so we put on our rain gear, dropped off our stuff, and out we went.
We are staying in the neighborhood of Palermo, which is a fantastic little area with tons of restaurants and clothing boutiques. There are so many trees everywhere, which makes for a really nice atmosphere. We stopped for coffee at a restaurant down the street, where we had our first chance to practice our extremely challenged Spanish. Trying to secretly flip through our less-than-cool “Travelers Language Guide” under the table, we hoped that we didn’t look too much like tourists, but quickly realized that was a lost cause due to our jeans, tennis shoes, and large camera bag. Not only that, but we have both already developed the ridiculous habit of speaking English using a Spanish accent… don’t know why!
The sun finally came out and we made our way on the subway to San Telmo, an area which has a huge antique market every Sunday. Along the way we noticed that Buenos Aires reminds us a lot of New Orleans - the Spanish influence I guess, mixed with the city feel of San Francisco, with a little Greenwich Village thrown in. A very charming place overall! Before we got the market, we walked through the Microcentre, which houses the large Cathedral and the “Pink House”, which is the Argentine version of the White House. It was apparently made that color (a light Pepto-Bismol hue) using white paint and ox blood. Hmmmm. Very pretty architecture though - definitely European style.
The antiques market turned out to be more like a big garage sale, with some pretty funny odds and ends, but it made for great people watching and it was just fun to walk around the streets browsing. We had a good lunch, including Coca Cola Light sipped out of wine glasses, and salami sandwiches. Afterwards we shopped a little more - Harold bought some great leather shoes for $40, and we watched a couple doing the tango in right in the street.
We checked into our hotel - the Bobo - which is wonderful. Because people keep really late hours in Argentina (e.g. dinner doesn’t start until 9:30), we were able to take a long nap when we got back which was much needed. We’re about go to down to the restaurant in our hotel for a drink before we head out on the town for a good steak dinner and some Argentine Malbec. Internet is a little slow, so hopefully we’ll be able to upload all the pictures we want to. Everything is great here so far… so happy to be here!

More Pictures to come....we're have a bad internet connection in our room

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Photos

Coffee Shop
First place we went - near our hotel in Palermo

Fruit Stand - San Telmo
Thought this was a cool picture

Pink House
This is the president's house, our equivalent to the White House

Comments

[Bib]

Very cool
I am very impressed with the blog, I would have no idea where to begin. I hope you have a very fun time. Take lots of pictures. Love Bib

[Ryan]

Tu-tu Tango!
It's great seeing those strangers on the street doing the Tango, but I wanna see you and Harry doing the TANGO!!!...come-on guys...show us what you've got! Glad y'all are having such a great time - keep it up with the steaks and malbec!

[Andria]

fun!
Hi guys! I'm so glad you're having fun. Keep the blog and photos coming...they're fabulous! Enjoy!