Happy Easter!

Buenos Aires (Palermo District), Argentina

April 8, 2007
S 34°35.045
W 058°24.500

Happy Easter! We had a nice little Easter brunch in our apartment before heading out to explore more of the city. During the weekends many of the public squares in Buenos Aires are filled with merchants selling all kinds of jewelry, leather goods, mate gourds, and other trinkets.

Well, I should tell the whole story…we decided to go to Recoleta after taking a detour on our way to the San Telmo district. San Telmo hosts an antique fair every weekend with Tango in the square; we thought we could get a twofer. San Telmo is at the complete opposite side of the city from the Palermo and we planned on walking there—that is how we get everywhere, not because we don’t want to take public transportation or a cab, but because it helps us get our exercise and allows us to really see the city at the same time.

We walked for about an hour when we found a cute little park and decided to take a quick break. We walked through the gates and quickly realized it was the same cute park we were in yesterday; a park that is really only fifteen minutes from our apartment. I decided to take a different road, not realizing it took us out of the way before it looped back. We were still at least 6 KM away from San Telmo. That is when we altered our plan and decided to go to Recoleta instead. We’ll go to San Telmo next weekend before we fly home and when we are staying closer to the area; our original plan before I tried to deviate today.

The Recoleta fair was happening even though it was Easter Sunday. There were plenty of tourists outside in the sidewalk cafes, in the park and walking through the art faire. The Hare Krishnas were out dancing; working up a sweat before sneaking off to get some ice cream at Freddos, one of the famous local ice cream joints. We sat on the lawn of the square, enjoyed the sun, and shared some mate before wandering back to our place—no shortcuts this time!

We missed coloring and hiding Easter eggs with all the kids in Hughson America, being with family, and playing the traditional Armenian egg-cracking game, but we had a nice day wandering around BA and enjoying the sun.

24x7x365: We haven’t given an update about us for a week or so… things are still going well. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enroll in Spanish classes due to the numerous Argentinean holidays last week. I figured four classes wouldn’t really improve my Spanish, especially since I won’t use the language again until Spain. We plan on getting an apartment in Barcelona in October/November and I’ll definitely enroll in classes in advance. Needless to say, Marc and I have been together continuously for the entire trip, except for the fifteen minutes I went out today to buy a phone card! Yes, it was really the first time one of us has gone out without the other. We still love each other, so that is good and I am sure we’ll get a small (and welcome) break in San Francisco next week.

Other Notes: The City of Buenos Aires seems to be doing a great job renovating their parks; however, they decided to renovate nearly all of their parks at one time. We like seeing the money going into the city. But from a tourist’s (and Project Manager’s) perspective they should try finishing one project before starting another and develop a repeatable process.

Also, we’re not convinced there’s enough money budgeted for all of these public works projects. There are signs at each park, or building renovation, stating the allocated funds for the project, but some of the dollars and the ambitions of the project seem a little out of whack. We’re not sure how the local government can accurately estimate the cost of these projects when it appears it has been at least 30 years since a renovation of this scale has occurred. We just hope they have enough money to complete all of these projects. I guess we’ll find out during our next visit to BA.

Google Analytics Update: We’re continuing to monitor Google Analytics on a regular basis. We are happy to announce we have had visitors from across Europe, China, Australia and, or course, the United States. The majority of our hits this week, 33 out of 206, came from Madera, CA. We believe some of these hits are coming from Grandma Heckman who lives near-by in Selma, but we want to give a shout-out to the rest of our fans in Madera, CA! Another interesting note, which is to be expected, 66% of our hits are from people returning visitors. We hope you are enjoying our trip as much as us. Thanks for checking in and please let us know your thoughts.