3 days.... me gusta....

It's been a little bit crazy... I've been here for three days and haven't had a ton of free time to update this or I did, but I was trying to catch up on some sleep because of jet lag.

DAY ONE:

I got into the city and at my apartment around 10am. I met Ernesto, the owner of the apartment where I'm living... I got settled in sorta, haha and then I called Jessi and met up with here a few blocks away from my apartment, we went and got my cell phone hooked up.
After that we went for a Frappe (think Starbucks Frappucino) which are REALLY popular here.. especially now because it's really hot.. its summer here.  Then we decided to head out to Tigre, the river delta about an hour and a half from Buenos Aires on a train. It was an awesome trip but I was half asleep the whole time.

Tigre

After we got back I crashed for about an hour and a half at Jessi's apartment before we headed to their friend's from her program to have an asado on the roof. It was delicious! But I was still dead tired!
I ended up getting home and crashing until 9:30 or so the next morning.

From the roof where we had the asado

Asado

DAY TWO:
Jessi had to be out of her apartment at 10am, so she came over and put her stuff at my apartment and we headed out to Retiro to buy her bus ticket to Cordoba. Retiro was crazy, it reminded me more of Mexico city, it was a lot more run down and there were poor people and illegal immigrants from the slums selling some cool stuff on the street out front (the villas or slums are right across the tracks). After that we walked from there all the way down to the water front... called Puerto Madero... which is the nicest-richest area of the city... it was a cool boardwalk area with fancy restaurants and hotels and apartment buildings.. and yacht clubs:

We worked our way up the road to the government House, called Casa Rosada or Pink House (Argentina's version of the White House) and did a tour, it was pretty cool, saw some stuff, like the main plaza of Argentina and the famous balcony where Evita talked to her peeps (see the Movie version where Madonna sings "Don't cry for me Argentina" to the crowd below), and we also saw the current president's office (Argentina's version of the Oval Office) she wasn't in the office today so we got to see where she works and stuff....

The office you see above is the President's office, the picture of the picture of the couple... the woman in the picture is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the current president of Argentina, the man is Nestor Kirchner, the former president and husband of Cristina. Cristina was elected after him in 2007, sadly (weather you like them or not politically it's still sad) Nestor passed away in late 2010 so Cristina is now a widow.

After that we walked up the road to Calle Florida, the main shopping district where we saw a lot of cool stuff and saw Galerias Pacifico a huge really, really fancy full of name brand stuff I could never afford.

 

 

 

 

 

Galerias Pacifico

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later that night me and Jessi decided to head over to the barrio of San Telmo before she took off and we got the chance to meet up with Pablo, a cool Argentine kid from the other side of the country, here to study at the same University as me. We got some Dulce de Leche ice cream and Jessi got some pizza, which I ate some of and we had a Quilmes (my first) haha not a huge fan of beer, but its THE beer of Argentina. we sat in Plaza Dorrego which is a really awesome plaza in San Telmo which is very Bohemian styled.  Its also the same place where the Bush daughters got robbed when they visited Argentina in like 2005 or 06 hahahah :)


DAY THREE:

Today I had to go out and refill the minutes on my phone because I ran out! then I went back to the barrio of Belgrano to pick up the concert ticket I'm going to in April....

On the way back I picked up some empanadas to eat which were delicious I'll take a picture the next time I get some...

I got home and met the cleaning lady, Cristina, she was a nice and cute little lady hehe...

After that I went and met up with Liz, Jessi's old roommate in Plaza Francia, which is a nice park outside Recoleta Cemetery, we chated for a while before heading home... on the way back I started texting with a girl I had met on Lonely Planet forum and on Facebook who is studying here from the states and we went and had coffee... and now I'm sitting at home skyping and getting ready to go find a bite to eat.

Cafés all over the place.

Plaza Francia

Cemetery of Recoleta