Tuesday: The next day we headed to an area of town called Palermo. It is now one of the upper class neighborhoods--filled with boutique shops, big green, trees (it's spring here, so all the leaves, flowers, etc are blooming) and a couple of huge, beautiful parks. The neighborhood used to be a lower-middle class working neighborhood on the outskirts of town, and it's where the famous Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges grew up. I insisted on finding his house, because it was in the guide book and I really like his work. We wandered up and down the street (named Jorge Luis Borges in his honor) and couldn't find much--I expected it to be a little museum or something, but finally we found a plaque the said "Jorge Luis Borges lived here during his childhood from 1901-1914" You would think they would preserve the places where he lived a little better seeing as he's, oh I don't know, the most famous author from Argentina. After finding his apartment, we wandered through the shops in the area and admired more street art. I really wanted to find a pair of nice leather boots (Argentina is famous for their good quality, inexpensive leather) and finally after almost giving up, I found a nice pair in a little boutique shop. After that, we headed to the parks. There are a couple of different parks are really close together--a botanical garden, Japanese tea garden, rose garden and "regular" park--and they were all so beautiful and open and green and nice to get away from the city in (Santiago is definitely lacking in this aspect of their urban planning, they don't have a nice big park to get away from the city in). First we went to the botanical garden, which had everything in full bloom since, like I said, it's currently springtime down here. Then we wandered down into the bigger area of the parking, just taking in all the greenery and open spaces. Over by one of the little lakes we saw some baby ducklings...they were very cute. Last, we made our way over to the Rose Garden. It was absolutely gorgeous, they had roses in all colors of the rainbow (literally, I even saw some blue and green ones, I'm not sure how) and of course it smelled really good all over. We spent a while just sitting on one of the benches enjoying the beautiful colors and tranquility. Then, we decided it was time to head back because we wanted to go to a tango show that night. We ended up at a café called Café Tortoni which is one of the most famous ones in the city (Borges used to frequent it). It's pretty cool on the inside, although very touristy. We had dinner and a show--the dinner was quite yummy, I got a salad and (ironically) a hamburger, and we all split some wine. The show itself was awesome. There was a live band playing the music and the dancers were incredible. The did a variety of different dances from couples to just the men to just the girls, and there was a little bit of theatrical acting mixed in. I had just read an article about the Argentine tango the night before for one of my classes, so it was fun to see everything I had just read about being acted out. It's a much sadder dance than most national dances, and it's absolutely amazing how the just whip across the stage. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the show.
Wednesday: Bright and early we headed over to the boat station to catch our boat across the river to Colonia. The boat was really nice, it was really big--three stories plus an outside deck, a café, some comfy chairs with TVs, and even a duty-free store. The ride was 3 hours across the river (it's more like the ocean than a river) and it was really pretty. While we were pushing back there were two ladies who decided to dance tango on the top deck which was fun to watch. It got really windy, though, so I decided to head inside and sat at the front of the boat so I could get a nice view of where we were headed. When you're in the middle of the river it really feels like you're in the ocean because you cannot see land anywhere, which is kind of a strange feeling since you know you're on a river. When we spotted Uruguay, we decided to head down to the bottom deck to watch as we pulled into Colonia. When we got down there, it was a pretty cool view. It was also an open deck right at the level of the water, and there were a bunch of cars! I hadn't realized before that the boat could transport cars. When we got to Colonia, I was instantly in love. It's a small little colonial city right on the river that is just peaceful and beautiful. We went to two hostels before deciding on the one we wanted...it had free bikes, instant selling point. We ended up getting our own room since there were three of us (Carolyn, her roommate Alex and me) and the hostel itself was really nice--it had a couple two big courtyards which all the rooms opened out onto. We took three bikes, signed them out and headed out on the town. Oh yeah, they had no bike locks, they said we could just leave or bikes wherever and no one would take them...weird. We were like, are you sure? And they said, yes, it's really safe, don't worry! The town has a bunch of small museums which you buy one ticket for entrance to all of them for a whopping $2.50. We went to the two museums that wouldn't be open the next day (the close on a rotating basis) and then headed to get some lunch. (Going to the museums didn't take too long since most of them were 1-5 rooms each; we went to the tile museum and indigenous museum that day). We went to a little stand by the river that served milanesa, a really delicious sandwich that they, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for my health) don't serve in Chile. Then we walked down to the beach and munched on our sandwiches. After relaxing a little bit and enjoying the peace and quiet of being out of the big city, we headed down the road into the main part of town (where I don't think too many tourists go). It was absolutely gorgeous.
...well this is from about 2 months ago, so I will let you all enjoy this as I try and update some of my other adventures :) Basically, Buenos Aires was really fun and a much need break from school in Santiago before the final push to the end. I had a really great time exploring the city, but when it was time to go home, I was definitely ready. When I was first picking my study abroad experiences, I was kind of bummed that my school didn't have program to Buenos Aires, but now I'm really glad it turned out that way. I had a great time visiting and saw a lot of really cool things, but I love Santiago and Chile way more than I ever think I could love Argentina. Colonia was also really nice, we were blessed with amazing weather the whole time we were there, which was definitely a bonus. It was a nice little escape from the city, giving us time to just take a step back, breath and relax. Now, onward with the adventures :)
No comments:
Post a Comment