¡Hola amigos! We have had our first few days in Buenos Aires. We arrived on Sunday night and experienced the slowest airport either of us had ever been to- it took us over two hours from leaving the plane to exiting customs. We loved the response of the crowds waiting though – apparently here you chant and clap rather than complain! When we finally made it to our hotel, our lack of Spanish made itself clear when the non English speaking hotel receptionist asked me if Reuben was mi hermano. Thinking that this meant husband, I said “si”. I’m guessing she thought we were a bit odd sharing a double bed when this actually means brother!  Los estupidos means the stupid ones which is how we feel at times here not speaking Spanish.

We woke up on Monday to torrential rain, so were glad we decided to each bring an umbrella instead of share one as was our initial thought. We managed to get some breakfast with some guessing at words, and then catch the Subte (metro) up to the Galerias Pacifico, a shopping mall in a beautiful building.

After lunch, we wandered down the Av Florida, and found ourselves at the Plaza de Mayo, home of the famous Casa Rosada.  We walked all around here. As a side note,  I (Karen) was in Buenos Aires once before with my family and while we were here we experienced an uprising (literally, there were tanks in the streets and we were tear gassed.) It was pretty different to be here with no police and no riots! Check out here if you want to learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2001_riots_in_Argentina

We also checked out the beautiful Cathedral Metropolitana – a very ornate, beautiful Catholic church.

On Tuesday, we took a rest day and found a new hostel to stay in (from now on, free wifi is a must to help us with trip planning), but on Wednesday we were ready to explore again and headed out by bus to La Boca. La Boca is a really colourful area of town where we had lunch, watched the tango performance at lunch, and enjoyed all the colours.

After lunch, we went to Malba, an art museum which sadly was mostly closed (most of the exhibits are currently in Houston, Texas so maybe we will see them there!) and then went for a walk in the peaceful Japanese gardens.