Buenos Aires

I'm writing this post on the bus to Bariloche at night on the 22nd. It ended up being kind of a long entry, hopefully its not too boring for everyone.

I can't believe this was only our third day in Argentina! Wow. Here's what we've been up to. We slept poorly on the plane into BA. It's hard enough to try to sleep sitting up but when you throw in the fact that my seat control panel broke and I couldn't turn off my reading light, or my TV screen it made for an especially difficult trip. United was nice enough about it though, giving us a little ticket with some gift options as an apology. We chose 7000 miles since that's pretty much all that was applicable. Anyway, we landed and got our luggage, paid the reciprocal fees (130 bucks each!) and got though customs without a hitch. Then we took a cab to meet a friend's boyfriend (the friend was in Chile on work). Andres was awesome. He took us out to eat for lunch and gave us some tips for getting around. We then left our stuff at his office and walked around BA for the afternoon. We saw the Casa Rosada (pink house, same as our White House) and walked through the barrio of San Telmo, which was nice. Suzanne loved the architecture of the city a lot. Then we headed back and met Andres who took us to their apartment. In true Argentinian fashion, we hung out a bit and at around 10 pm went out to eat. Andres took us to a restaurant and introduced us to parillada which is kind of like a smorgasbord of meat of all types. Mmmm. :) We promptly concluded that John N would absolutely love Argentina! We got wine and salad and paid for Andres, all for a whopping 40 bucks after tip! Who hoo! Anyway, we were still very exhausted so we went back after a quick stop at an ice cream shop and went to bed.

We slept till 12:30 pm the next afternoon! We got up and spent the rest of the day walking around the city of BA. It is a lovely city. It's large to be sure but we loved walking around and seeing all the wonderful architecture and watching the people walking around as well. Once we got lost and randomly asked a guy on the street for directions and he was extremely friendly and got us on our way, even trying to speak in English to us gringos! Then, when on the subway, a lady gave us her seat when we walked on. If most Argentinians we meet are this friendly and welcoming then we are for sure in for a great time.

Suzanne's friend Ximena then came back and we all went out for dinner. Ximena was a foreign exchange student who stayed with Suzanne's family in Omaha during her high school years. The girls were so excited to see each other they talked past the time to go out for dinner, which in Argentina is late! So we ended up going out for ice cream again and calling it a night. We then woke up and got ready to go on our long bus trip to Bariloche!

When we were planning on going to Bariloche, we decided to splurge a bit and get the first class bus. Wow. What an experience! The seats fold all the way down to make a nice little bed, they show movies (all movies here are in English with Spanish subtitles), they have already fed us two meals (one with wine) then they came over again and offered us Champagne or Whiskey as an after-dinner drink! The Argentinian countryside so far is very flat and full of farmland. I think between here and the mountains its just all farmland. Suzanne thinks its like Nebraska but I'll let her describe it.

So so far, impressions are great! This place is definitely worth the visit. We've been spoiled so far though. We had friends who pretty much took care of us and helped us through anything difficult. We are so grateful to them! Tomorrow we will wake up and be on our own however and while I'm confident that we'll be able to handle anything that comes up, it's definitely going to be a bit more difficult. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Just arrived in Baroliche and that'll take a whole other post.

~Mike