A Holiday in the City

This holiday weekend should find us in Peru again, however, we have had a slight change of plans. For more than one reason, we put our return trip to Peru and Bolivia on hold… for quite a while. This decision does make us a bit sad, but it is nice to relax here in Buenos Aires and see even more of this wonderful city and catch up with friends we haven’t seen for a while or even at all.

This weekend is also a long holiday weekend here in Argentina. Instead of celebrating Memorial Day on Monday, the holiday down here is 25 de Mayo, which was this past Friday. 25 de Mayo celebrates the beginning of the revolution that eventually led to Argentina’s independence from Spain six years later on July 9, 1816. On Friday we took a walk through the Plaza de Mayo, which, although it was over by the time we got there, had some sort of patriotic celebration on a grand scale. One neat thing about this holiday is that everyone gets flag crazy, more so than at home during 4th of July – stores, government buildings and banks fly the Argentinean flags in front of their businesses; taxis and busses fly flags from their windows; and people wear ribbons and pins of the flag.

Tonight, to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend, we stuck with American tradition and had a bar-b-que. Of course we could not have one here at our apartment because a bar-b-que may not even fit – but one of the great parts about Argentina is that everything, we mean EVERYTHING can be delivered. And by everything we mean: pizza (obviously), empandas, pastas, sandwiches, your laundry and groceries, bread, sushi, ice cream, and asado (bar-b-que). So for $30 pesos ($10 dollars), we had a bottle of wine, 2 steaks, 3 sausages and french fries delivered for our holiday feast!

This past week, which has found us shuffling around Buenos Aires, we have visited some museums and today we went to an older part of town to the San Telmo Fair, which is one of Grace’s favorite things to visit, especially the tango shows they hold in the plaza. We were out for just a bit today because the weather here is getting colder, as winter is quickly stepping in.

We hope everyone had a wonderful weekend with family and friends. We miss you all.