Time for a flashback:
All forty of us students and four faculty members got off the plane in Buenos Aires early Sunday morning and headed for the Meliá Hotel downtown. I was thinking to myself that Buenos Aires smelled particularly poorly, especially having caught unpleasant whiffs from the airport all the way to the orientation room in the hotel. But then it struck me that the forty-four of us were the ones who passed our expiration dates a little bit after all those hours travelling. We were all tired and simply wanted to clean up and nap until we had dinner in the evening. I know all I really wanted to do was to shower and sleep. That was it! Luckily enough for us though, immediately after orientation at around 10:00 AM we were deemed fit and safe enough to go around all of Buenos Aires and compete in a scavenger hunt.
We were grouped into teams of six and given a stipend of 500 Argentinian pesos ($41.67 at the rate the hotel provides us). My team was Chelsea, Marta, Morgan, Jon, Kevin, and myself. Strongly desiring to just shower and sleep, we headed off anyway onto what became not only the first adventure of many, but a stellar time too.
One of our many stops was the Obelisco (Obelisk). We were tasked with taking a selfie with the monument. Constructed in 1936, it was built to commemorate the fourth centenary of the foundation of the city of Buenos Aires. It is placed in the center of Avenida 9 de Julio which is the widest avenue in the world, consisting of up to 7 lanes in each direction flanked on the outsides by parallel streets of 2 lanes each.
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Avenida and the Obelisk
http://www.buenosaires.travel/avenida-9-de-julio/ |
Our most costly stop was at the Café Tortoni where we spent four hundred of our five hundred pesos. Stepping inside was like being whisked into the past. The location that it sits at at present was constructed in 1880. There is beautiful wood walls and columns and marble all around. It even appears that they host shows as there were small theaters and other rooms down corridors and behind velvet curtains. At the advice of our Spanish-speaking group member Marta we ordered a sort of hot cocoa that was rich and delicious and similar to nothing I had ever had before, combing hints of coffee, what we know as hot chocolate, and the richness of a hot fudge. Served with freshly baked croissants, there was hardly a peep at the table as we were all in awe with this simple Argentine snack.
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Los Ganadores at Café Tortoni
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| Entrance to Tortoni |
Jon and I are here in our room about to go out to dinner tonight writing about this day because our team, fittingly, Los Ganadores (The Winners) won the "city game" out of all the groups. I was really pleased with the whole experience and look forward to maybe (probably) seeing Chelsea and Morgan tasked with writing about the Chilean city game after we bring home that trophy too.
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| Congratulations to us! (Courtesy of Sofia) |
In the moment we were mostly happy that we did not clean up prior to the game because it began to rain and ultimately we stayed feeling rather icky, but more generally, looking back on the experience I had a great time with Chelsea, Marta, Morgan, Jon, and Kevin and I firmly believe that the best way for us to have seen and become familiar with Buenos Aires was exactly how we were commissioned to go about it, effectively a free-for-all. The city became our oyster, and we found many pearls.
