Sunday, April 12, 2009

Man! We are tired! It’s been an exciting few days, but we definitely need some down time. What’d we do today? Let’s see…. I woke up late, Sonia was already up as usual... My legs were already tired from the day before, so I told Sonia that I just wanted to go for a little 2-3 hour excursion, chill out and read or something, and then head home. Our 2-3 hour excursion turned into an all day walk-a-thon.

(spanish-english dictionary, check. guide book, check. map, check!)

It’s Easter, and tons of people were out in San Telmo for the Sunday market/fair thing. We saw tango dancers in the street and lots and lots of tourists.

(the narrowest house in Buenos Aires, it's six feet wide. According to local legend, the house was built by freed slaves on a sliver of land given to them by their master.)

(there's tons of art nouveau here)

We spent time looking at all the buildings, and came upon this super cool artist’s loft. I snuck my camera inside to take a picture. The guy was blasting tango music and painting away. It was just so romantically beautiful.

We passed by Plaza de Mayo – the main square in Buenos Aires. Evidentially a group of women called the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo protest here every Thursday. This is also where Casa Rosado is, where Eva Peron gave her famous address.

*Between 1976 and 1983 the Argentine military dictatorship instituted a reign of terror known as "El Proceso" in an attempt to impose order on the country by eliminating its opponents. As many as 30,000 were murdered, including trade unionists, political activists, rebellious priests, student leaders and intellectuals. Most were kidnapped, tortured and "disappeared": buried in unmarked graves or sedated and thrown from planes into the Rio de la Plata. Their mothers formed the Madres Movement and have protested every Thursday afternoon since 1976 on the Plaza de Mayo to embarrass the regime into providing answers, despite the intimidation and "disappearance" of several of their own members.*

(Argentinians view the green Falcon as a symbol of El Proceso, cuz that’s what the police drove during that time.)

Our destination was Puerto Madero – the place all Argentinians seem to love. It’s a built up version of their formerly run-down waterfront. Every porteno we met has told us we must go, how wonderful it is. It ended up just being really weird. There was a TGIFridays and some other American chain. It just seemed really grand in an obscene American way. We gave it a shot, we tried to like it, but yeah…. It’s just not our thing.

(some weird bridge. they call it the nike symbol. not sure why...)

(we were on a little bridge taking this photo and a crossing guard started yelling at us. so we thought we just weren't allowed to stop on the bridge. but as we got closer to him, we noticed that the bridge was moving! there was a boat that wanted to pass. and the bridge turns to let the boats in. it was crazy cause we were still on the bridge when they started to move it!)

We were by this time starving, so we stopped at a pizza place for some food. They even had a vegetarian menu! Sonia got this pumpkin mash – and I got cheese pizza. Yummy stuff. Then on our way home we got some gelado (we’ve vowed to make it a daily tradition… it’s SO good here.)

(we learned today that calabaza means pumpkin! tons of pumpkin here. and it's SO tasty.)

Now it’s like 8:30 and we’re both dead tired. Taking it easy and watching some tv in our living room. And I’ll go back to reading my self-help book. School starts tomorrow! We’ll be up at 7am. Yikes.