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Sunday, February 12, 2006

tomorrow: my last day in buenos aires

yesterday was the first day that i noticed my tan lines on my feet from my sandals and i haven´t even been to the beach yet! it´s so hot today. 28 degrees!

everything is closed today. even mcdonalds. i even had a hard time finding an internet cafe.

la boca isn´t worth visiting. too commercial. there´s nothing really authentic about it. but san telmo, which i just arrived from, is really great! i went to that big flea market and they had great stuff. there´s this one street full of antique shops and the flea market was only antiques but really good quality antiques. everything was so old. you could tell buenos aires was a great city with lots of money from those antiques. you could find anything. old dolls, phones (the ones that you hold the mouthpiece), clocks, records, photos, cash registers, gramophones, cameras, jewellery, lots of stuff from the 20´s-30´s.

buenos aires and montevideo are very similar in certain ways. i don´t like the breakfast. they don´t eat eggs here for breakfast. they eat cakes, pies, croissants with sugar on top or with dulce de leche in the middle, fruit salad, cereal (but it´s not popular. my aunt didn´t even know what it was), toast, ham, cheese and mortadella. argentinians who live in buenos aires are called porteños and people who live in montevideo are montevidanos. they both love eating deserts. on a typical street in both cities you´ll see a confiteria. confiteria´s are places to buy deserts and the deserts here are delicious. some of them have bakeries too. they´re called panaderias. you can also find a magazine stand everywhere, a farmacia (a drugstore that only sells prescription drugs, shampoos, cremes, band aids but not much else and there´s usually a security guard at the front), a used book store, the sidewalks are in granite or another type of stone but a lot of them are broken so i keep tripping on them. none of the sidewalks here or in montevideo are in cement. i can´t say i like one city better than the other. you can´t compare them. they´re different. the men in montevideo always make comments at you when you´re walking down the street. it´s always been that way. it´s annoying. people here leave you alone. they´re friendly but not in your face like in montevideo. in montevideo, i´ll take out my camera and someone stops me to tell me that it´s too dangerous to show my camera in that area. they also want to know everything about you. they love to talk and gossip. the spanish accent in both cities are different but the pronunciation is the same. they both pronounce pollo (chicken) ¨"pojo". instead of poyo the way they do everywhere else. people don´t hold their coffees while they walk down the street. they don´t even have those cups available. you can´t go into a cafe and ask or something to go. you have to sit down and wait for a waiter to serve you. i´ve seen some people drink mate here but it´s not as common. they sell them everywhere though. people look the same but i´ve seen some aboroginal people here that you don´t see in montevideo. they´re from the northern part of argentina. apparently they forgot to go up north to kill them all. that´s what they did many years ago. they didn´t want any natives.

i couldn´t sleep last night. when i turn off the air conditioning i wake up sweating and when it´s on, it´s too cold. so i think i´ll just leave it off. we have to leave buenos aires at 7 tomorrow. so there´s still some time during the day to spend my last argentinian pesos. i´m going to miss it here but i feel like it´s time to be on a beach. i´ve seen enough of buenos aires. i still have recolleta to see today and tomorrow santa fe street. it´s a beautiful city. the taxi driver said that in 5 years things are going to get much better. probably by then the argentinian peso will be stronger and i won´t be able to afford it!

i´m starving. i have to eat lunch now.

ani
xo

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

old phones are cool, my door buzzer is an old retro 70's phone, but its not that cool and it has paint on it. i've been wanting to replace with a retro or old phone.

is there surfing on the beach you are gong to? if there is you should get a boogie board and try it out. its pretty exhilarating when the wave picks you up and takes you for a ride. if you do, don't forget to wear a t-shirt or your tummy will get scratched

12:31 PM  
Blogger Carmen said...

there´s no surfing in piriapolis. the waves aren´t big enogh

7:37 AM  

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