¡Buenos Dias, Buenos Aires!

We haven’t even been in Buenos Aires for 24 hours, and it feels like we’ve been here for a week. After an 11-hour flight and a two-hour visit through immigration and customs, we arrived in Argentina. Our tour guide, Nico, met us at the airport and drove us to our hotel. I really, really wanted to take a quick nap on the way to the hotel (it was an hour drive, and I had gotten all of three hours of sleep the night before on the plane), but the ride was fascinating. Buildings had clotheslines hanging from the balconies, motorcycles were driving in between cars on the highway, even the billboards were different (a McDonald’s Triple Mac? A Burger King burger with five patties??). We got to our hotel, which is right along Nueve de Julio, the widest street in the world – 144 meters long. Our room is older but nice, and has an actual bidet in the bathroom. While examining the bidet, my roommate, Kara, accidentally sprayed herself in the face, which was positively hysterical. We then went for a quick lunch of pizza at Los Inmortales, which was our first taste of Argentina without a fluent Spanish speaker (we survived!). Why Italian food? Argentina has a huge Italian influence because of the large number of European immigrants that used to come over.

We then took a four-hour bus tour with Nico, who showed us a bajillion places around the city. We saw La Casa Rosada – The Pink House – which is similar to the White House in Washington D.C. Their president, Christina Fernández de Kirchner, works there, but doesn’t live there. The house is across the street from La Plaza de Mayo, which is where many anti-government protests occur. In addition to that, it's the remembrance site dedicated to los desaparacidos, who are thousands of young people who disappeared during la Guerra Sucia (The Dirty War).

We saw cathedrals, theaters, parks, and we stopped for tea time at a gorgeous café, Café Tortoni. Then we went to my favorite place so far – La Boca, which is a very colorful neighborhood where immigrants used to live. They couldn’t afford a lot of once specific color of paint, so they would start with red, and when that ran out, they would use different colors to paint the walls. In La Boca, there are shops, restaurants, and houses. I would have to say the best part, though, was when Heather was petting a dog, and a local man came up, pretended to be a dog, nustled his head against her, and asked for a kiss. She did her best to escape him, but he got a kiss on the cheek. She was mortified.

We came back to the hotel and had a couple of hours of free time (shower, anyone?) before we walked to La Estancia for dinner. I have NEVER seen so much meat in my life. First, they brought out a half of a sausage for everyone. Then beef empanadas. Then boiled cheese. Then salad. And THEN, everything else. On steaming plates, there were ribs, beef, chicken, another kind of beef, another kind of beef, and goat. I tried the goat, and it tasted like chicken, but then I couldn’t bring myself to eat another bite when I found four hairs sticking out.

When we got out of the restaurant, we saw that it was POURING. So we ran through the streets – looking totally American, I’m sure – and crossed el Nueve de Julio in one light, which was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. We got back to the hotel totally drenched, but everyone was too exhausted to take another shower. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep in about eight seconds.

So far, I love it here. The streets and the people remind me of a combination of New York and a European city, and I absolutely love everyone in my group. It feels like we’ve known each other for years, but we were pretty much complete strangers on Tuesday. We have more tours and visits (and food!) in store for us today, but I sure am glad that I have a good night’s sleep to keep me going…