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.