Seeing the Sights

We spent a fun week with Cody and Amy, who arrived with their luggage, only 3 hours later than scheduled – setting a new record for our visitors. This was their first visit to South America, and we were happy to show them all our favorite places around the city. After the welcome breakfast (turned lunch due to the airline delay) we wandered around the San Telmo fair, checking out vintage posters, surprisingly well-kept gramophones and green/blue glass “siphon” water bottles – the kind with the CO2 cartridges to make the water bubbly as your pour it. We also watched a man on stilts dance with little kids, an orchestra perform tango music, and our favorite puppet show.
In the remaining days of Cody and Amy’s visit we spent time in Microcentro, walking along the big, busy streets of Avenida de Mayo and 9 de Julio, stopping for coffee at Café Tortoni and Puerto Madero. We checked out both the Museo de Bellas Artes and the Evita museum. We spent a while playing with the resident stray cats (all of whom Cody lovingly named “Scraps”) and taking photographs at the Recoleta Cemetery. Our trip to the zoo was also a great day because we managed to catch up to a zoo keeper, and followed him around for a bit while he fed some of the animals lunch, and we were also lucky to find some of the food pellets that the kids from the school field trips had dropped near the camels – so we fed them too!
We also spent some time visiting Caminito, a small part of the Boca neighborhood where all the buildings are painted in bright colors, and a street fair is set up on Sundays. Another day, we spent in Colonia, Uruguay walking around the cobblestone streets and having lunch at our favorite pasta place with the singing and crazy hat wearing waiter. We also took Cody and Amy to our favorite paper store and restaurant (now their favorites too we think!) in Palermo. We also cooked at home a few dinners – notably our famous home made tortillas and home made pasta! However, I think all four of us agree, that our favorite part of their visit was when we ordered empanadas and ice cream to be delivered and played marathon games of ChinChon –that Amy almost always won!
The morning after we sadly said goodbye to Cody and Amy, our friend Mark arrived – at his scheduled time, but without luggage. We’ve spent the past two days here in the city with him, visiting some of the same places we enjoyed with Cody and Amy. This evening we went to a bar to watch the final match of the Copa Libertadores, an all South-American club soccer tournament that has been going on the past few months here. Our favorite team, Boca Jrs. was playing Gremio, a Brazilian team. In the previous game (home for Boca), Boca won 3-0, giving them a good lead for the final game. The second half of the finals was played in Brazil, where Boca scored 2 more goals, winning the tournament dominantly. They are now the champion club team in South America. The game began at 10:30pm and ended around 12:30am (after much singing and cheering from our fellow fans in the bar). It is now 1:30am and we are back in our apartment. Cars are still constantly driving down our street with passengers hanging out of the windows, waving flags, yelling and honking horns in celebration. This sure is different from sports celebrations at home – there is really nothing to compare it to. Although we wish it would settle down a little so we could get some sleep, it is nice to see people be so passionate and excited for something. We didn’t have our own pictures, but we found some on Boca’s website to share. For more pictures from our trips to the zoo, Colonia and around the city, here are the links:
http://picasaweb.google.com/martinswims/ColoniaIII
http://picasaweb.google.com/martinswims/ZologicoDeBuenosAiresII
http://picasaweb.google.com/martinswims/PaisajesDeBuenosAires

Just Hanging Out...

My, my it has been a while. Since we decided to stay here in the city and try to cut down our daily budget a bit, we have been somewhat low-key, yet creative in our activities. Unfortunately, for about a week, we were severely limited in our creativity due to an unforeseen cold-snap – the chilly-est fall weather that Buenos Aires has seen in over 50 years. One evening, when the temperatures dropped below freezing, so many people plugged in their heaters, that we had a power outage for about 30 minutes. Being the California kids we are (and not having a heater of our own), we spent much time on our couch, under a sleeping bag, drinking mate and tea. When it was warm enough, we spent time wandering about the city photographing graffiti murals and stencil art in San Telmo and trying Argentine McDonalds McFlurry flavors (which are different than at home). We have also been keeping up with the games in the Copa Libertadores, a South American Soccer Tournament, and currently Martin’s favorite team, Boca Jrs. is still in it and doing great (we can not say the same for River Plate). When at home, we spent time cooking new recipes (including a fish-chowder casserole that came out great despite filling our apartment with smoke while in the oven), and reading Paulo Cohelo novels such as The Alquimist and Brida (in Spanish!).

We were not alone the entire time though. Martin was fortunate enough to have lunch with nearly 40 of his dad’s closest friends from military school, who meet up on a monthly basis. We also attended the 6th birthday celebration of Camila, the granddaughter of a cousin of Martin’s mom. We had a fun evening there, talking politics with the adults and laughing at riddles from the kids until 3 in the morning! On another late evening, we met up with Ceci and Nacho and some of their friends from grad school at a bar. We also enjoyed both a dinner party at our apartment, and a boat ride on the Tigre river delta with Carlos and Marisa (the owners of the campground in San Clemente del Tuyu).

We are very happy to have our friends Cody and Amy here now visiting for the week, and we will put up more of our adventures with them in a post soon!