Thursday, 1 February

Buenos Aires:  Happy Birthday Logan D and Sheila H!  We slept late, then had breakfast at the same restaurant downstairs. I’ve regretted not working on learning some Spanish, but had memorized what we wanted, from a sign I saw, and that went well. Few people here speak any English, so our Spanish skills would improve quickly if we stayed awhile. They’ve already gone from 0.01 to 0.1, I think. Prices are unbelievably low, in our terms and it’s interesting watching the different ways things happen here. Parking, for instance, seems totally random. Stop signs are just a mild suggestion, but stop lights are serious. We got what seemed like easy directions from the hotel manager, as we headed out to find the hop on hop off tour of the city. However, when streets are not straight or at 90 degrees to one another, and there are often no street name signs, easy directions can soon go awry. But no worries – we have Google Maps! It seemed we were very far in the wrong direction and it was getting very hot. But we persisted. Until we couldn’t resist the lure of a bar, where drinks were available and it was a bit cooler. At that point sanity set in and we hailed a cab. Turned out Google Maps had it entirely wrong and we’d been almost there before we turned it on. Ah well. Then another little Spanish lesson from the driver. By the time we got on the bus, we had just enough time to ride 

the whole route
before they stopped for the day, so that’s what we did. An interesting and sometimes beautiful city with a long history and a lively arts scene. Many gorgeous lush parks and other areas that are brown and dry.

Palatial, old buildings, crumbling tenements and brand-new towers. Moms cooling off with their kids in little pools out on the sidewalk. It was hard to get photos from the bus, but we did get a few. Back at our hotel, having taken a cab as our first choice, in time for a beer before supper. While we considered branching out for dinner, we were tired and hungry and had just LOVED the pizza last night, so we went back for a repeat performance, with a different dessert. They already know us and I’ll miss the restaurant staff there. Back to our room to catch up on email and an early bedtime. Then the power went off, apparently just in the hotel. Luckily, Larry had brought a little emergency light, so we proceeded with our bedtime preparations, and hoped the power would return before our room got too hot. Fortunately, it was back on in about a half hour, so we could retire comfortably.
Photos of the Day