Pickup Volleyball at Casa Rosada anyone?

Off to San Telmo's Plaza Dorrego. Our taxi driver over to San Telmo was great. Talking about kids and what not. Drop this line “little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.” Then proceeded to inform us of his son who refuses to get a full time job and enjoy the bohemian lifestyle. He decided to take a driving vacation by himself. Of course he showed us the guide book and route he was planning on taking—all en route to San Telmo. He said, The holiday is all me alone, my time, my money. No one else gets any!

We get to San Telmo and say good bye to the nicest driver we’ve had. It’s an antique fair/flea market in the town square. We are on the hunt for duplicate keys like our apartment. We found them after a little while and at a total deal- $2AR per key and of course we bargain down to 6 for $10 Pesos. I also find a nice hat to cover my already fried face. It’s cute and covers much more than my ballcap.

Once outside of the Plaza we see cheesy tango dancers posing with tourists for photo ops. Then we stumble upon this old guy JAMMING with a younger guy. Hmm. It was really cool music. So we stay a bit and find out this is swing/tango/rock fusion band called Guitarras Fussion . So we buy two Cds for $20AR each ($7.50 US). We actually didn’t understand what the guy was telling us about the music- fast BA Spanish with loud music, not sure which CD had the music we were hearing, so we just got both.

We wander down Calle de Defensia and go toward the Plaza de Mayo. We thought we were on our way to some great area—it was a shanty town area. Oops. We see lots of people actually playing volleyball on a really basic set up- bamboo sticks for lines, a wire for the "net". After being in the hot sun and not having had lunch yet, I was fading quickly. So we jumped in a cab and headed back to our neighborhood. (*side note- we were actually in front of Casa Rosada, the government house and location of Evita's big balcony speech. Oops! guess that's what happens when you don't check out your guide book!)

We got dropped off near our neighborhood, but up a few streets to Santa Fe in search of a book store called El Ateneo, the largest bookstore in South America. We found it and it was pretty amazing, kinda different since it was an old theater.

It was Sunday. That didn’t mean a whole lot to us prior to looking for food. Nothing, and I mean Nothing, was open. So we heading over to our local Disco grocery and got some roasted chicken, lettuce and cheese for dinner. Headed home and had a great meal.

I finally get a hold of my sister Brianne and realize that the Charger playoff game is happening. Off we go to El Alamo (Uruguay 1175) to see the game. We catch the last half and make some new American friends, and the token Canadian. El Alamo is the popular American bar for football games and hanging out with ex-pats.

After the game, we jump in a cab. I guess he saw us a drunk, dumb Americans since we were leaving El Alamo. We were only American of the three. So we give him our address and away we go…in the wrong direction. He took us in circles, turned off the meter for our benefit,and we were totally calling him out on it, in Spanish. I think he finally realized we knew what was up and he started to head in the right direction. As soon as we were in our general area, we jumped out. We had even doubled checked that we got in a “radio taxi” as were told to use exclusively. Weird. But we know our neighborhood pretty well at this point, well at least Greg does, and we walked the rest of the way.

Ran across the street for take out, of course. This time I tried the ham and cheese empanada, and the Napolitana (tomato, cheese and spices). I also got the flan and dulce de leche. Or really it was the dulce de leche with a side of flan. Either way my tummy was happy.

We get packed for our trip to the Delta and realized that we need to get up at 5:30 to be at the station by 6:30. uuugh.