Day 2......January 9, 2016
Buenos Aires, Argentina
After departing Seattle,WA on Friday, January 8th, 2016 in the early afternoon, we arrived 14 hours later in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Saturday afternoon. When we arrived we were greeted by a glorious day complete with a crystal clear blue sky and sunny and warm 88 degrees. We were surprisingly refreshed as we checked into our lovely hotel room which will be our home base for the next 5 days. It's a suite which I must admit it is quite nice. It has two full walls of floor to ceiling curved windows which lend themselves to some spectacular views. Here's half of it:
Our hotel is located a few blocks away from the main streets. From our window, we have a lovely view of the obelisk and surrounding area.
January is summertime in South America and this month is also part of Buenos Aires' summer vacation time. Both students and their working family members take time off from the hustle and bustle of their daily city lives and generally leave this booming metropolis to spend time away on their holiday and summer break. Consequently, there are fewer folks on the city sidewalks. Even though it was a Saturday afternoon in January, from our hotel room window the streets looked virtually vacant with few cars and even fewer pedestrians.
After shaking off some of our trail dust, exchanging our heavy Seattle winterwear for our light and breezy summer clothes, we decided that there's no time like the present to go exploring. So that's precisely what we did. Here are some of the highlights of our first afternoon in Buenos Aires:
We walked past some lovely shops, many of which specialized in penguins carved out of the pink stone, Rhodocrosite, commonly referred to as "Inca Rose". Rhodocrosite is the national stone of Argentina.
We meandered past shop after shop of Argentinan cow hides.
Some were made into the ubiquitous leather jackets; but a few more enterprising shops specialized in cowhide geometric patterned comforters,
and yes, even a chair!
We stuck our heads inside the largest shopping mall in this area, which was still festively decorated with its Christmas balls, only to find few shoppers.
We passed by one of the best looking sightseeing buses ever; but as one can tell by the the front bumper,
this sightseeing bus has seen better days.
So we walked thru the lovely park instead.
There were plenty of street vendors to offer you a cold drink. This shopping cart offered freshly squeezed orange juice.
It seems that everywhere one goes there's a McDonald's.
This Big Mac, advertised at 33 pecos, would be about $2.35 US dollars. While we don't frequent McDonald's, we were intrigued to see ads for McCafe.
Out of curiosity, we stuck our heads into this McDonald's McCafe only to find its interior is modeled virtually identical to that of Starbucks.
We were ready for a coffeebreak, but not from here; so we kept walking until at least we found our way to the famous Florida Garden Cafe!
Here we were treated to an exceptional cappuccino and house sandwich served by world's most wonderful waiter! He loved that we had flown in from the United States today just to eat at his restaurant. The desserts were absolutely out of this world! We loved every mouthwatering minute we were there. We didn't want to leave! If you could have tasted their divine desserts, you wouldn't have wanted to leave either.
As we headed back to our hotel, we stopped in one of the Argentinean convenience stores to get some bottled water. We did a double take when we read the name:
"Open 25 Hours!" store.
Throughout our stay in Buenos Aires, regardless of where the 25 Hours Store was located, every single one we entered inevitably had their big screen tv turned on to "The Simpson's"! As we looked at Homer on the big screen, we knew it was time to head back to the hotel to get some sleep.
