Although we will only see a sliver of her, Buenos Aires is gorgeous. There are enormous parks with enormous trees. The statues in the traffic circles are stunning. It is very clean and tranquilo. Everyone is obeying traffic laws and slowing for pedestrians. There are no huge trucks with black exhaust and it isn’t loud from honks, brakes, or screams. Both our cab drivers said it isn’t always like this however, as it's a holiday weekend and many city folk go to the country for the weekend. They both said it's normally loco. After checking into our hotel in Recoleta, we had some decent Italian food and snuggled in for the evening. It is Saturday night so there is likely some kick ass music or tango show in El Centro, but Grandma & Grandpa are tired…
We spent Sunday at the Recoleta Street Market. Technically it opens at 11 am, but it really didn’t get going until 1 pm, leaving us lots of time to explore the cemetery and surrounding streets and shops. We reiterate how gorgeous and uniquely tranquilo Buenos Aires is this part of town on this holiday weekend. And perfect weather. We hadn’t yet purchased a souvenir for ourselves and were hoping to find a really nice sheepskin or cowhide, and we bought a beautiful brindle hide.
I totally screwed up on the pick up point for our airport shuttle (dammit Tara). The pickup point was a Starbucks, and it never occurred to us there would be two within a block and a half and I chose the wrong one. So we had to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a cab. Sigh. We had as good of an eleven hour redeye flight as possible to Newark, landed at 6 am, had a four hour layover, then a four hour flight to Cancun. A second and successful shuttle later, we arrived to Playa del Carmen. We’ve only explored a few blocks, but we are grinning from ear to ear. Our apart hotel is fantastic; it is right in town and has a balcony, living room, full kitchen, huge bathroom and we have full control over the temperature. We are stoked for ten full days of beach walking, Cozumel snorkeling, pool-side reading, taco eating, and Tecate drinking.
Our final and long-winded blog post will be next week.