3 days in Buenos Aires

I write this a broken woman, lying in my recently won and highly coveted bottom bunk bed with a lukewarm tea.

(Hangover combined with sleep deprivation over the last 4 nights, I feel like a student again. I've discovered it is basically impossible to get a proper night's sleep in a dorm, partly through fear of plummeting off my top bunk to my death in the night and partly because of all the general shuffling/snoring/toilet going).

So far in Buenos Aires has been great. The city seems really big (at least compared to Leeds!) and divided up into separate districts. I am staying in the Monserrat/San Telmo district. Buenos Aires has a really European feel with lots of big buildings with Parisian style balconies, because the country used to have something like the 4th biggest economy in the world (its GDP made up half of the whole of south America's GDP) and so lots of money was spent to model BA on one of the most stylish cities of that time- Paris. Interestingly the economy then crashed and the various different subsequent governments stuck modern and ugly houses up willy nilly between all the posh ones. So the architecture is super interesting, with a European style multi balconied building right next to an ultra modern one, for example.

On my first full day I basically just wandered around BA. I walked up to Recoleta cemetery which is an enormous cemetery in the middle of one of the posh residential areas. It has loads of elaborate memorials to wander between. I love a good cemetery so I spent a while here. When I got back to the hostel Rhys (who works here) was making empanadas with the leftovers from the asado so he taught Andy, Melina, Carmen and I how to fold them. We made about 100000. They were DEELISH.

The next day I went on a free walking tour with Melina from the centre of the city to the north. It was 3h long! Afterwards we headed back and I failed at a pre night out nap. I can't handle evenings out now without at least 10 hours sleep beforehand as I am a grandma.

Most of the people in the hostel speak Spanish to a fairly competent level as they are 6 months into their trips and have done quite a few lessons etc. Melina lives in Rio so she is fluent in Portuguese. They were all eager to go to 'Spanglish', kind of like speed dating but in groups. Each table is arranged into half native English speakers (usually gringos) and half locals; you converse in English for 10 minutes and then a bell rings and you switch to Spanish. Then another bell rings and people change tables. It was fun but required Beer For Confidence. I had a long discussion in English with someone about the Argentine opinion towards the English re: the Falkland Islands, and someone said 'juxtaposition'. Then we had a discussion in Spanish that my name is Katy and tengo 26 anos. Excellente.

Afterwards we got free entry to da club where I got drunk.

The next day everyone was feeling self pitying. Melina, Carmen and I managed to drag ourselves to the Sunday market where I ate an Evil Burger and we watched a little bit of tango on the plaza. I then began to lie in bed trying not to vom. Pleasingly Andy had been to the pub to watch the football and wanted to continue the English vibes by making everyone tea. Carmen and Melina lay in my bed with me looking at Tinder and spilling tea everywhere. The best thing of the holiday happened when Jared left (not that part) and gave us a sort of travelling business card that he had made up with a photo of himself with a beer and his WhatsApp and Facebook details. Hilarious and I would expect nothing else from someone from LA.

PS
The Evil Burger showed its true nature when I projectile vomited everywhere at 2am. Yay!

Pictures: 1) a bookshop in an old theatre, 2) recoleta Cemetery, 3) empanadas, 4) the government asked people in BA to vote for their favorite and also least favourite building- this won both, 5) selfie in front of CongressRead more