Long flight, first impressions

Chilean mountains from the airplane

Anna and I took off from PDX at around 10:30am Saturday and flew without hitch--besides a persistent migraine and some screaming children--to Buenos Aires; we got in around 10:30am on Sunday local time and got a ride from our travel people to the swanky Sofitel hotel downtown. We were passed out at our minutes later. We woke up starving and walked from the hotel down the pedestrian street, which was sort of a dirty version of the walking streets in Copenhagen. Street vendors had their wares out on sheets, and all the stores catered to the mostly tourist crowd. It was fairly lame. On our way from the hotel to the metro, we came across an arcade. Anyone who knew me well in my teens knows that I'm completely obsessed with an old street fighter-style arcade game called Killer Instinct, that has been all but entirely wiped out of existence by now. Still, I check every arcade, and sure enough, this one had it!! I stopped and played a couple rounds and it was as amazing as it always used to be. I'll definitely will make my way back there before we leave.

You don't even know how good this game is. Seriously.

The subway system was very good, much like NYC's (except that this one stopped running by 11:30pm!), fast and underground. We got out and walked through some more trendy neighborhoods on our way to dinner at Bar Uriate. Most of the shops and stuff were closed but we peeked in and saw some euro-style trendy 80s clothes, funky shoes, and some other cool stuff. There are a lot of equestrian gear, leather, CD shops, and restaurants around town. Dinner was pretty damn good--I had a pork rib and anna had some spinach stuffed pasta dish, and we finished it off with my favorite--souffle (called fondant here). Nothing amazing, but it was a solid meal, especially since we hadn't eaten anything good since Friday. Stuff isn't quite as cheap as I expected here. Drinks are substantially cheaper than in PDX, and our meal wasn't too bad, but it's not vastly cheaper.

Since the subway was closed we walked fairly far from pallermo back to the hotel, with one stop at a crappy irish bar for a beer and hot cocoa for fuel. Anna managed the whole hike in some high-heeled boots per usual though the beer stop was necessary for morale! Irish bars suck as much here as they do in the states, no offense to the irish. So far Argentina is 0/1 on beer too--we tried a scottish ale brewed here that was total crap. We found a brewery on our way back that we're going to check out tomorrow if we get thirsty, but after Copenhagen I have little hope for non-american ales, with the exception of Belgium and possibly Germany, though they're even overrated.

My feet are leather!

The walk was good and we got to know BA a bit on the journey. It's in serious need of some repair and some regulations on driving (too aggressive), littering (lots), and dog shit cleanup, and it's fairly poor. There is garbage juice everywhere and the whole city kind of smells like it. There are a lot of restaurants, though not really any ethnic besides the plethora of italian joints. The people are fairly earthy looking; not particularly fit, kempt, or naturally attractive. It would certainly be hard to match Copenhagen for human beauty. There are some hipsters but I haven't seen a single fixed gear bike! In fact, I haven't seen many bikes at all. We may rent tomorrow, but it's a little scary on the roads here.

Kids were kicking a soccer ball into the door of this cathedral

I hear it snowed like crazy and it just keeps coming in Portland. I hope that this doesn't screw up local business too much but I must say the week of riding my MTB to work in the snow was awesome! I'm sad that I missed the heavier stuff and some of the awesome XC and DH skiing that everyone must be raving about!!

Time to email this blog URL out!! Colonel out.