Buenos Aires and Happy Birthday Justin


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Published: June 23rd 2009
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We have been in Buenos Aires since Saturday. We´ve mostly been walking around and getting a feel for the city. It is broken up into different neighborhoods, each with its own character, and we have managed to visit most of them. On Sunday we went to Recoleta and walked through the market and then through the cemetery (where Evita´s grave is located). We also went to a Boca Juniors soccer game. It was fantastic. Even though they were having a bad year, the atmosphere was still amazing. In the hard core fan section they sang, waved flags, played music and jumped about the entire game. Above us was the opponents section (Gimnasio) and when they scored the entire section of our stadium was shaking and we thought it was going to fall on us - luckily it did not. Another highlight was with 30 minutes to go in the match a ton of people in our section and the hard core fans section started shooting off flares/fireworks. It was crazy, there was so much smoke you could not really see the field for a bit. They also shot them at the other team´s fans above us, it was nuts. In the end Boca lost 2-1, but it was a great experience - aside from the fact the police would not let our section leave until the Gimnasio fans were safely on their bus (which was a bit silly as the hard core Boca fans had already left and our section was made up of many tourists and some Boca fans), they held us for a little over 40 minutes, ugh. Definitely a highlight of the trip for Justin. Yesterday we wandered around downtown for a bit and then took a bike tour through different neighborhoods. It was a great way to see the city, and we luckily made it through in one piece. It ended up being a private tour, as we were the only ones with our guide. It started out in downtown BA, which was crazy. Think of biking in New York city with only these instructions - "it is like king of the jungle, strong survive" and we were off. One of the best parts was Jasmine´s face and her wobbly bike riding. I thought a few times she was going to have a heart attack, but she was a trooper and avoided the various hazards (although she almost did not make it down the narrow street that we had to share with massive buses flying by us mere inches away.) We biked to Puerto Madero, a very swanky new area of BA, then we went to the ecological reserve which was closed since it was a Monday, then we went to La Boca which is a very poor area of BA and one to avoid at night, then we went to San Telmo which is the oldest part of BA and we ended up at the Plaza De Mayo, where as recently as 2001 eight people were killed while protesting. This took us a little over three hours. All in all a great way to see the city. Yesterday was also very exciting because we finally had our laundry done, which was long overdue!! We went to dinner at a nice steak restaurant Jasmine´s dad had gone to years ago. We then attempted to go out dancing last night to celebrate finding out yesterday that Jasmine officially has a job for next year. Unfortunately, they are closed only on Mondays like many other things in South America. Today we plan to see some of the sights located in the neighborhood we have been staying in - Palermo - and then try to find something fun to do to celebrate Justin´s birthday. Tomorrow we will be taking a boat to Colonia, Uruguay and will be spending a couple of days there. So far we are having lots of fun!!

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