Off to Buenos Aires!

At 7:30 AM, we hopped in a taxi to the airport, and by 9:20 AM, we were flying to Buenos Aires. The flight took an hour and 40 minutes. Compared to a 20-hour bus ride, it was definitely worth the money! Everything was supposed to be more expensive here, so we were curious to see just how much. The taxi's starting fare had gone up from 0.70 pesos to 1.20 pesos, which isn’t too bad. What was more exciting was finding a place to stay. It turned out to be quite a challenge since everything was booked up. We finally struck gold at our third hostel/hotel. Surprisingly, the price at this hotel, Hotel Uruguay, was cheaper than the hostels we had checked out, which were also recommended by Lonely Planet... A double room at Hotel Uruguay costs only 60 pesos, while a double room at a hostel was 86 pesos—more expensive than in Salta! :o We got the last room at our hotel, so we were lucky! :o The only downside of staying at a hotel is that the staff at the reception often don’t speak English or know much about what’s happening where and when. Luckily, there are two hostels nearby, so we’ve been popping over to get info about the city. We already have big plans for the next few days—everything from tango shows to a football match with Boca Juniors! :o We also had some practical things to sort out, like our flight tickets, since we won’t just be staying in the capital for the rest of our trip. We still need to see the Foz do Iguazu waterfalls, Uruguay, and Rosario, which is said to be the perfect Argentine city. Let’s see what they mean by that... The remaining places are easiest to reach from Buenos Aires, which is why we’ve come here first. So far, we’ve booked flights to Iguazu, located right at the borders of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, for Sunday. A one-way ticket costs 299 pesos per person. It’s not worth taking the bus there since it would take a whole day! :o We’ve been wandering around the pedestrian streets. There’s so much to buy, but if you want clothes of the best quality, they’re almost as expensive as back home. So far, we haven’t found the good markets with knock-offs that are such a hit in the East. :) Honny did buy the Argentine national team jersey with TOVGAARD #10 printed on it. Who knew there was a player with that name? ;) In the middle of the pedestrian street, there was suddenly a lot of excitement around a guy. It turned out he was a football player for the Racing club. We took a picture but haven’t quite figured out his name yet. :) Close to our hotel, there’s a big road that was closed today due to a large demonstration when we got back. People were unhappy with a politician who had indirectly been responsible for a nightclub fire a couple of years ago. Apparently, he’s trying to get back into local government again. Back at the hotel, we discovered that there were unfortunately more power issues. Everything was dark, and the electricity wouldn’t be back until around 8 PM. The hotel assured us that this wasn’t normal here—thankfully! ;) We headed back out into the city until the power came back on so we could take a shower. :) At 9:30 PM, we were ready to take a taxi to the Palermo area, which is supposed to have lots of restaurants and bars. We found a nice and relatively cheap place where we were served the biggest steaks we’ve ever seen—Honny’s steak weighed 500 grams! Two large main courses, a good bottle of wine, salad, and water cost 71 pesos. When we got the bill, we were a bit surprised by a charge of 5 pesos per person. Hmm… it turned out that you had to pay for cutlery, plates, and cleaning. We had never heard of such a thing before… If only they had just called it a tip, but you had to add that on top of it yourself… Later at the bars, we could also feel we were in the big city. Before, we only had to pay 8 pesos for a drink at the nice places; now it was 10-12 pesos. That didn’t stop us from enjoying strawberry daiquiris! :)