Centro and Palermo

The last few day have been pretty awesome.

Monday was spent exploring the parts of the city near our first hostel. Chris's flight from Iguazu didn't come until 8pm so Luke and I did lots of walking during the day. The three of us went out to dinner around 11 at a steak place that was recommended to us by one of the receptionists in the San Telmo neighborhood. The food was amazing. We all got tenderloin steaks that were slightly different for about $12 a plate and they were all very, very good. We came back to the hostel around 1 and made friends with a few people staying in the hostel and some of the employees, and basically spent the entire night drinking Quilmes, playing pool and talking with everyone. It was a lot of fun. Argentines like to stay up all night and we went to bed sometim around 7. Everything here seems to be delayed about 6 hours from our regular schedule in the states, so the time zone changes is really helping.

Tuesday afternoon was spent doing more of the same thing, exploring the city with no actual agenda. We were actually supposed to play soccer with one of the employees, Francisco, and some of his friends around 430 but they Argentined us and cancelled it around 6. Instead, Francisco took the three of us and his lady Nally, a tourist from Australia, out to the port area for drinks and eventually another nice restaurant. The drinks and restaurant were about a mile from the hostel so Francisco was able to show us a lot of the city. I think we got back to the hostel around 3 and hung out until 4.

Wednesday, New Year's, we switched hostels and moved to a different neighboorhood, Palermo. Palermo is very pretty and a lot nicer than the hood from earlier, Centro. People in Centro love to throw their garbage out on th streets and the city has trash everywhere. There also seems to be some more poverty there. Palermo is maybe comparable to downtown Berkeley in my opinion. Our new hostel is bigger and much cooler architecturally, has more friendly people but the employees are less friendly. Apparently New Year's is a big holiday but not exactly a big night for Porteños to go out at night so we went to a party organized by our hostel. The hostel company organized this huge party that for $140 pesos took us in a bus to Le Tigre (an hour away or so) to some waterfront party hall that was very pretty. It was a lot of fun because there were probably 200 people or so from the different hostels, including the people we made friends with from Centro. There were actually very few Argentines and a lot of Australians, French, and Brazilians. We had a blast because everybody we are around is friendly...the kind of people who are travelling and going to this party are just naturally going to be outgoing. We were at this place for a while, went to this club called Crobar and eventually walked back to our hostel. The whole night was seriously a great time.

Overall we are all really, really enjoying this trip. The city and lifestyle is similar enough to the United States for us to get around, eat, socialize, etc., but different enough that every single thing we do is a great cultural experience. For example, the restaurants here are very similar in terms of what and how you eat, but still different. Nearly any place you go you get waited on. The servers do not intereract a whole lot, take their time, and never rush. In the US, we would be getting extremely impatient; here it's just fine.

We have taken tons of pictures, but they are mostly and Chris and Luke's cameras and those idiots are napping upstairs right now. Next update will have pictures of a lot of this so you all can see the city, where we've been, and to prove that people here are very tolerant of Luke.

¡Ciao!