Buenos Aires: BRILLIANT and AMAZING!

So! I have quite a lot to dish on this week. We left for Buenos Aires on Friday morning. We stopped in a place a long the way that is where a world famous collector has several of his collections. They also make jam out of everything there! Then we went on to Colonia de Sacremento, Uruguay. It is a little cute town with lots of shopping and a lot slower pace than the city. We walked around and climbed around on the old walls and such for a while.

Then we went the rest of the way to BA on the ferry. The bridge between BA and Uruguay has been closed and is still closed so we took the BuqueBus which is a ferry and a bus all in one. Ben and Autumn and I had a lot of fun on the bus. We got to BA and went to our hotel. After a while, we went to a restaurant and got some Argentine pesos out of the ATM thing. The charge said that it was $11.55 to get money out but then we discovered that it was in pesos which means it was like US$3 which is pretty normal.

The next day we went on a tour of the city with our personal tour guide named Angeles. She was great. We took lots of pictures. We went to the Plaza de Mayo which has the famous "pink house" and quite a few monuments. Then we went to the cathedral where San Martín, the liberator of Peru, Chile, and Argentina, is buried. Then we went to La Boca. This was a place that was build to be basically slums, but then a man came a long and decided that just because they were poor didn't mean their houses had to be sad. So they got lots of different colors of really bright paints of all colors and made it look more cheerful. Then the tourists liked the colors, so it has turned into quite the tourist destination with lots of restaurants and shops and all that kind of stuff. I think my mom would really like it too. It was my favorite place in BA.

After that, we went across town to Recoletta, which is home to the giant cemetery with Evita's grave. Eva Perón is the famous wife of a president of Argentina and the title star of the musical Evita. There were so many beautiful graves and statues and all that. The graves are all like mini-building mausoleums with like layers and layers of caskets stories down. Then there was a market that we walked through and I bought a cute artsy painting thing. Then we went to the fine arts museum that had like Picasso, Monet, Rembrant, and Van Gogh. Upstairs was all South American art. Autumn and I had a lot of fun narrating each piece and it took us about two and a half hours to get through most of it.

Then my group of Taylor, Linley, and Abel walked around the market again and I got a ring (something I had been wanting since I got here) and its super cute. That night we got dressed up and went to a tango show. The food was great and the dancers were fun too. It was a great but long day.

I am going to cut myself off there and tell about Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in the next post mostly because I need to go to bed. I can't wait to get yall updated on the rest. Check back soon!