Guest Blog by Melissa (pronounced May-LEE-za)

Greetings from Buenos Aires!!  I’m fulfilling my mandatory guest blog obligation – I have a lot to tell you about from the past 2 weeks!

First of all – Buenos Aires is AMAZING.  Easily one of the best places I have ever visited.  It has a very European feel to it and is very heavily Italian-influenced.  I love saying ‘Ciao!’ to everyone – feels so fancy.

The biggest difference I’ve noticed here is how LATE everything happens – people eat dinner at 10pm, don’t go to the bars until 2am (at the earliest!) and when I wanted to go home at 4am I was the party pooper who wanted to “leave early”.  It’s definitely a big adjustment, especially since I’m working while I’m here and trying my best to maintain my usual East Coast hours.  Drew and Aaron also refuse to go to bed before 4 or 5am even when we aren’t doing anything – lucky for me, I’ve figured out a solution to this problem – don’t I look sexy??

Since Drew and Aaron have an apartment here, we’ve basically been living like locals, which is really nice – our days typically consist of me getting up to start my work day, Drew and Aaron sleeping in for a bit and then they head to the park to lay in the sun, have lunch, play cards, read and listen to music.  I usually head over there for about an hour or two in the late afternoon to have lunch and hang out with them.  It’s gorgeous nearly every day here (minus a torrential downpour we got my first night and last nights here) since it’s the end of summer.

Here are some of the highlights of our travels & experiences:

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise upon arriving to Buenos Aires.

Aaron and I in Plaza Mayo the day I arrived

beautiful cathedral near Eva Perron's house

Cathedral with live guards.  No idea who/what they are guarding.

The pictures really don't do it justice!  My favorite memory of the cathedral was that Aaron had to pee so bad that he was actually considering peeing somewhere inside the church (not in a bathroom).  I'm glad we were able to get him to an actual restroom before that happened!  Not-so-holy-water.

Drew and I at La Boca - the birthplace of Tango dancing

Florida Street - this is where all of the 'black market' currency exchanges take place.  Everyone is trying to get you to convert your US Dollars there for Argentinian peso - very shady.  Especially all of the cabs out front of these places waiting to take you "home" afterwards...no thanks.

Obelisk

Obelisk by day

Obelisk by night

Another distinct thing about Buenos Aires (BsAs) is that EVERYONE has a dog.  These dogs are out and about at all hours of the day and night - it's not uncommon to see a professional dog-walker walking 8+ dogs at a time.  BsAs is obviously a big city with a lot of cars, yet these dogs just follow their owners around without a leash on - they never cross the street when they aren't supposed to, it's pretty impressive!  I can't even get my dog to sit.

As Drew and Aaron have mentioned, the Argentinians love their parks!  People of all ages and walks of life congregate here to hang out with friends, eat lunch, have a beer, sunbathe, etc.  It's also common to see some more interesting activities such as slacklinging (above - these were actually Gibbon slacklines which is the company Drew worked for before leaving for his travels!!), juggling and trapezes from the trees.

There was also this bizarre fad over there - they are similar to ski boots, with a football-shaped flexible thing on the bottom.  They are some sort of exercise for your legs.  And we thought Sketchers Shape-Ups were ugly!

Oh the famous homeless man on the corner.  He's just made himself right at home with artwork on his wall, a working television set, and 2 dogs.  He has a weimaraner that is about the size of a pony.

 We really wanted tacos, so we went to one of the few Mexican food restaurants in the city - it wasn't anything to write home about (even though that's kind of what I'm doing).

'Fiesta Dorothy' - I've never seen anything like it.  This party happens once every 3 months or so and was pretty ridiculous.  There were just levels and levels of thousands of people with music, laser/light shows, etc.  This is where we met Elton John's makeup artist and his flight attendant (have you ever heard a gayer sentence??) and they offered to let us come to the concert a few nights later in Uruguay...it didn't work out, but it was nice to be invited!

Stained glass at the venue where Fiesta Dorothy was held

 Beers in Plaza Serrano where we (Drew) ate too many peanuts

Shopping in Plaza Serrano weekend market.  This was pretty late on a Sunday night - people are ALWAYS out in this city, it's so vibrant and full of life!

Fred, our pub crawl host.  This was really fun and gave us a chance to meet other people traveling who spoke English - we had a blast!

Rosé in the park

This is how we spent a good number of our evenings together.  Dinner, a few drinks and a whole lot of Skip-Bo!

Dancing on my first night in BsAs - so much fun!  Sorry I had to pull the plug so early at 4:30am.

Don Julio - one of the top steak restaurants in the city.  Easily one of the best steaks I have ever had and I think it was less than $15 for a steak.

Don Julio

D & A in the park

Las Cabras parilla - SO good.  We went back a 2nd time and ordered a huge grill with at least 8 types of meat - Aaron was so adventurous!!  I waited until we got home to tell him what I think he was eating - he was a good sport :)  I stuck to the chorizo, steak and chicken.

One of our favorite things to do - have a kiki!!  A kiki is basically a small house party - it comes from some silly song that is all the rage in BsAs.  The 2nd on the right is our friend Lucas who we met there and lives just outside of the city.



La Boca (the Mouth), Parques, Parillas and Closed Door Dinners

So Drew and I are still in Buenos Aires, Argentina and I am not sure if we will leave again before returning to the United States.  We had plans to go elsewhere but the vibe and the lifestyle is so amazing we just can't imagine anything better.  With that being said, we were lucky enough to have our good friend Melissa Hanning fly in from Ohio and stay down here with us for two weeks (sadly we just had to put her in a cab and send her off to the airport).  She was here for two weeks and the time flew by.  She is making her own post which she has started but didn't have time to finish.  Since I do not want to steal her thunder on any photos I will just show some of the items we have been doing over the past few weeks.  She arrived from the States on a Saturday which is a great day to go sightseeing.  She was tired, but a very good sport so we took her down to the centro so she could see some of the beautiful architecture we had already seen.  From there we went on to the neighborhood of La Boca which is where the Tango was born.  The neighborhood is very sketchy to get to and it is famous for the colorful buildings and as I stated before, Tango Dancing.

Here is the first building you see when arriving in La Boca.  One thing I will say is that it is very cool, we wish we could have stayed longer but I felt like I was in Mexico on the beach with people trying to sell me stuff constantly which turned me off but I am still happy we got to go down and check it out.

A Panoramic view of the main square in La Boca.

Some more colorful buildings.  Everywhere you look people are dancing and there are little shops selling you trinkets (attempting to anyways)

In the background here you can see some of the Tango dancers.  Each restaurant has their own shows going on and there are also dancers in the street that you can take photos with for a fee of course.

A pink pizza restaurant.

These were our favorite buildings and the entire street was like this with every color of the rainbow.

Melissa and I walking through the square.  We did buy post cards here to mail back home but while sitting and having lunch we forgot them on the table.


So since Melissa arrived we have been going to the park a lot.  Its not quite as nice as a beach but as you can see from this picture below the Porteños take their park time seriously and people are always in the park drinking, eating, sunbathing.  Old, young, rich, poor, you name it, everyone goes to the park.

Here you can see all of the people with their friends.  We just moved to a new house today which overlooks this area where everyone is sitting.

We have been dying to try a Parilla (basically grilled food) and the most famous one around seems to be Las Cabras (translation, the goats) and all locals and what not eat here.  We actually went twice while Melissa was here because it was so good and cool and you can have wine and steak with appetizers all for under 15 bucks a person including tip.  The top of the photo is form the inside of the restaurant with us eating outside.  

This is from our second trip to the restaurant.  We decided to try the Parilla Completa which basically included every meat imaginable.  Most of it is good, a few things are questionable (I ate something that was pretty interesting and I do not want to know what it was and I will never try it again).  We also ordered some mashed potatoes and maybe the best creamed spinach I have ever had.  

Another fun thing to do around here (of course involving food) is a closed door dinner.  Basically you eat at someones house.  You make reservations online and only when you have confirmed the reservation do the send you the address.  This photo is from outside our last dinner together with Melissa and the closed door dinner called Cocina Sunae.  An Asian inspired restaurant and the owner is from the United States.

Drew and I before our food came (also you may notice we wear the same clothes everywhere and thats because we packed so little).

We sat outside which was a beautiful garden, but this is the inside of the persons house where their living room would normally be and you can see all of the people enjoying the company of their friends.

Above you can see the papaya salad, our second course, which was just as tasty as the ones we had in Thailand.  The first course was shrimp wrapped in vermicelli noodles but we ate that too fast to get a photo of it.

Drew had Phó, you actually order what you want when you book your reservation and usually there are two or three options for main course but the appetizers and desserts are the same for everyone.

Melissa and I had chicken curry with pumpkins and it was incredible.

For dessert, not quite sure what it was, but it was riced based and though at first I wasn't a fan of the texture, it grew on me and now I cannot stop craving it.

This photo is my favorite but didn't come out so clear but nonetheless shows our happiness.

Melissa stuck inside the Closed door dinner trying to get back out to us!

So that is what we have been up to lately, eating, exploring and enjoying the company of our friends.  I will say I admire the culture here in Argentina.  Everyone seems to slow down and enjoy all of the important things in life.  Dinners last several hours, people make sure they see their friends every day whether it be for coffee, ice cream (my favorite is Granizado which means chocolate chip), or just lounging in the park.  Service is definitely slower than the USA but you get used to it and eventually begin to enjoy it.  The next post will be coming from Melissa soon.  We miss all of you back home, so until we post again.  Ciao!