Sep

11

Jet Set Stories | Our Arrival in Buenos Aires, Argentina part 2

Sep 11, 2008 by Melanie Van Orden 

San Telmo at nightPhoto: San Telmo at night by Libertinus

This post is the second installment of the story of our arrival in Argentina in February of this year. When I left off in the story, I told you about our international plane ride.

When our plane landed in Buenos Aires, I was excited to see what my new home was like.

I hadn’t done much international travel before this experience. I had gone to Canada once with my family when I was about 9 or 10 years old. The only thing I can remember about Canada is that there was French as well as English on my cereal box while I was there.

I had visited Japan with my local children’s song and dance group when I was 11, but we were trapped entertaining visitors in an American-style theme park for most of the trip.

I had visited Tijuana, Mexico with my family for a day when I was 13 or 14 years old. Not much to write home about.

And finally, I had visited Paris with Jason during our fourth anniversary for ten days. Now THAT was a trip. It made me hungry to see more of the world.

So really, I wasn’t the most experienced international traveler when we landed in Buenos Aires. I was very curious to see what it would be like to live in this foreign city for several months.

We retrieved our luggage and piled it onto two carts. We had 11 pieces of luggage, which was not fun. It’s a novice mistake to overestimate your need for certain items from home. Boy, have we corrected that mistake by now!

We had been warned that the exchange rate for currency at the airport was expensive, so we exchanged a minimum amount of cash at the airport and waited to visit a bank to exchange the rest.

When we began to exit the airport, a woman I didn’t know came up to me and seemed very interested in talking to me. When she got closer I saw that she was holding a picture of my family taken at my sister’s wedding. This sister I speak of is Jill, who is married to my Argentine brother-in-law, Javier.

It seemed that this woman was connected to Jill in some way, but I didn’t recognize her from any of the pictures Jill had shown me of Javier’s family.

The woman quickly explained in very limited and broken English that Javier’s mother, Susanna was here and came to pick us up. I was very surprised because Susanna’s earlier plan to pick us up at the airport had fallen through.

Susanna arrived by my side shortly after this woman and I began conversing. She hugged me and welcomed me to Argentina in the Argentine dialect of Spanish, which is called Castillian. She then turned to Jason and welcomed him just as warmly.

I was glad for this fun surprise. It was nice to have people there who wanted to show us a good time and get us safely to our hotel. A man joined us shortly, and Susanna attempted to explain who these two unfamiliar people were. The woman finally explained that they were acquaintances of Susanna’s family and had come to help us to our hotel.

We had too much luggage to take in one trip, so Jason went ahead with the couple to take the first load to our hotel. Susanna and I waited behind for them to pick us up with the rest of the luggage.

Susanna didn’t speak very much English, and I didn’t speak very much Spanish, but I had my Spanish-English dictionary with me, so we were able to communicate a little in Spanish while we waited. Susanna expressed a lot of interest in me, asking a lot of questions and encouraging me in my attempts to answer her in Spanish.

When the car came back to pick us up, I was fascinated as I looked out the window as we drove toward Buenos Aires. There wasn’t much to see other than fields until we reached the city. We drove through some of the historical parts of town, so I was impressed with the beautiful old buildings.

We arrived at our hotel in the famously chic district of Recoletta. Our hotel was quite nice, although our room was very small. It reminded me of hotel rooms in Manhattan.

After we brought our luggage upstairs, Susanna and our host couple asked us if we were hungry. We indeed were hungry, as we had been on a flight for about seven hours since Mexico City. We decided to go to a restaurant and get something to eat.

By this time it was the middle of the night in Buenos Aires, so when we walked through the streets to the restaurant there were very few cars in the road or people on the sidewalk. The tall and beautiful buildings of Recoletta were eye-cathcing, though, and I looked forward to being able to see them in daylight. Here is an example of the beautiful buildings in Recoletta:

Recoletta building

Photo: Recoletta by building:  krylov

We were very lucky to have locals with us for our first foreign meal. They recommended a good restaurant and helped us pick out our first Argentine steak. They also showed us the local custom for dressing salads with olive oil, vinegar and salt and tossing the leaves with two spoons.

The steaks and salads were delicious. Argentine beef is indeed the most delicious beef in the world, and Argentine produce tastes like it was picked straight out of a little garden! Our food contained stronger, fresher, more delicious flavors than most of the food I have ever eaten in the United States. And the meal was quite cheap, too!

As we were eating and conversing, the couple with us pointed out that a famous Argentine fashion designer was sitting just a few tables from us. This felt just like being in New York and spotting a celebrity!

During our meal time conversation, our hosts gave us tips for living in Buenos Aires; where to go, what to avoid, etc. It was really nice to be able to spend our first night in Argentina with my sister’s family member and some other locals.

We retired to our hotel excited about moving into our new apartment in the neighborhood of San Telmo. The picture the picture at the beginning of this post is a shot of San Telmo at night.

We knew that San Telmo is the oldest neighborhood in Buenos Aires, that the tango was born there and that it is the home of the largest open air market in Argentina. Other than that, we didn’t know what to expect from our new home neighborhood.

Look for the next installment of our Argentina story here at Jet Set Now on Tuesday, September 16th. Until then, what else would you like to know about Buenos Aires, Argentina?

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Comments

3 Responses to “Jet Set Stories | Our Arrival in Buenos Aires, Argentina part 2”

  1. Amara Van Orden on September 13th, 2008 2:01 am

    I really like the first photo. Very mysterious and the buildings seem beautiful too. You guys are so brave for having done this and seem to have adapted gracefully to it all well. I am curious about the history of Argentina and how they have bounced back from what I recall was a brutal past. Look forward to more! Thanks for sharing, Melanie.

  2. Landlord on September 15th, 2008 1:45 pm

    Thank you for the informative post. It was like I was actually there! I can’t wait to get back, it is such a beautiful place. I hope you enjoy your trip there.

  3. Melanie Van Orden on September 17th, 2008 1:47 am

    @Amara Van Orden - In answer to your interest in Argentina’s history, I’ll write a blog post all about it!

    @Landlord - Buenos Aires is such an awesome place to visit, I hope you get back there, soon!

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