ChrisWPdx

The original title for this blog was going to be “The Boys that Lunch,” since that is basically all we did today, but after lunch and dinner it seemed this was a more appropriate title. Certainly, a large Spanish influence in South America makes more sense than French, but surprisingly other than the language there isn’t much that feels Spanish about Argentina. There are a large number of Spanish restaurants, but they don’t really observe siesta, and the culture is entirely different. Argentina seems to have completely shaken off their Spanish Colonial roots in their efforts to have their own identity. One of the interesting things about traveling here, is that the history is basically parallel to that of the United States New York and Buenos Aires were growing and thriving at the same time. Buenos ... read more

Today was supposed to be a day trip to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. It turned out instead to be a result day in Buenos Aires. We were scheduled for the 8:30 ferry, which meant we had to be up at 5 to get ready and get to the terminal in time. The alarm went off at 4:30, and it kept going off. When I asked Jerry to hit the snooze, he said from a dead sleep “I am trying.” He was not trying he was dreaming that he was hitting the snooze button, finally he did manage to wake up enough to hit it. In the meantime, my back up alarms did not go off, it helps if you use am instead of pm when you set it. The alarm went off again, it was now ... read more

We are now back in Buenos Aires. There really isn’t much to blog about for yesterday, basically just a travel day. The flight back over the Andes seemed much less than when we flew into Santiago. The mountains also seemed much steeper. We at least had more comfortable seats, it was a true premium economy two seats to each row. The food they serve on the plan (if you can call it that) is horrible. The best I can describe it is very bad grade school cafeteria food. I know that anyone who went to school in the Portland Metropolitan area will understand what I am about to say. On the rare occasion we go hot lunch in school, there was also a staple item on the tray. A butter sandwich. White sandwich bread (probably Wonder ... read more

We have had a full day, back in the room for the moment, well for the night, we just decided that once again we are not hungry enough for a full meal, so we will forgo getting dressed for dinner, dealing with the metro there and back when we aren’t really hungry for a nice dinner. That seems to be happing a lot this trip, could be metabolism changing as we get older, we are eating to much at lunch (which really isn’t the case) but for whatever reason we have cancelled a lot of dinners. Trust me we are not going hungry but are saving money. On top of that, I am exhausted and we have a drive to the coast tomorrow. So why not enjoy this very nice room we have? Back to our ... read more

This will not be a very long entry; we basically did nothing but change rooms and dinner. It all started last night. The last several days the hotel management has left numerous notes about whether we were satisfied with our stay and if we would rate them a 10 on a scale of 1 -10. Well last night since we did not go to dinner, we decided to respond. We aren’t really dissatisfied, but we certainly didn’t believe we could give it a 10. There have been a few food issues (which they corrected quickly and we now have a free dinner coming) and the wine glasses could be cleaner. The staff has been fantastic, friendly and welcoming. The concierge particular have gone out of their way to secure reservations for us here and in Santiago ... read more