Thanksgiving in Buenos Aires

Sorry for the lack of recent posts. We've been inundated with friends and family so it's been hard to get to a computer to upload pictures. As soon as we flew from Ushuaia up to Buenos Aires, my sister Miriam landed from NYC. And Gabe (and his father) were in as well. Then Deanna's best friend Randi showed up, followed by Deanna's sister Lauren and her best friend, Bari. So for a few days we were rolling 7 deep and having a blast together! We were all here in BsAs at the perfect time--the two weeks in spring when the purple trees are in bloom.

The four of us (Gabe, Miriam, Deanna and I) took the ferry over to Uruguay to spend the day in Colonia del Sacramento. A very cute town settled by the Portuguese (coming over from Brazil) with a tropical-feeling beach and some fun ruins. Below on the left you have Deanna trying (unsuccessfully) to hoist one of the very old drawbridges up and on the right is a pretty street, which also has the awesome purple trees.











On another day, just with Miriam and Deanna, we walked around through San Telmo (where we briefly ran into Gabe and Shanon and Jared) over to La Boca, the rough-neck neighborhood known best for it's brightly-colored row houses and it's soccer team, the Boca Juniors. After wandering around the wrong part of town, we eventually came upon the tourist section, with restored houses and people tangoing everywhere.











And since we're as cheesy as can be sometimes, below are two pictures that are obnoxiously cute--us in front of Rodin's The Kiss sculpture and us in a cardboard cut out of a couple dancing the tango.





Another highlight from last week was going to a professional tango show with Miriam. After some incredible dance and song, Deanna decided to show the dancers how tango really should be done. I have a video of her dancing with the guy and one of me dancing with the woman (who very politely leaned in to me and whispered "stop dancing in circles!"). Actually, I'm in the process of uploading a bunch of videos, so stay stuned for another post coming soon with penguins waddling and glaciers calving in.



The following day, for Gabe's birthday, Randi, Miriam, Gabe and I went to watch a soccer game--next door neighbor rivals Racing Club vs Independiente. What a crazy and fun experience! Songs, dance, chants, flares, flags, smoke, riot police, and oh yeah, 90 minutes of football. Enjoy the montage of pics below (and feel free to blame some random Irish guy for our very dark faces in the first one). Make sure you check out the 8 foot wide moat that ran around the entire soccer field, preventing fans from running on the pitch.










Check out
all the
smoke from
both sides'
fans!














We capped off the incredible first week in BsAs with Gabe's birthday dinner (and a belated Thanksgiving dinner) at one of the 18 amazing steak restaurants we've eaten at so far. Again, feel free to blame some random Porteña woman for the awful camera work... We've got a few more days with Randi, Lauren and Bari, and then Deanna and I fly up to Iguazu falls where my old roommate Rachel will meet us for a couple of days there and then a few more days in Paraguay. Can't wait!
Stay tuned for some videos coming soon...