Día de la Bandera

Monday was the Argentine holiday Día de la Bandera, or flag day, so we didn’t have classes and got to stay in Buenos Aires for a third day. Actually the holiday is June 20 (which was Sunday), but they moved it to Monday so people could have the day off. We thought that was kind of funny, but we weren’t complaining! After our fun-filled night of tango we opted for a relaxed Monday morning and ate breakfast at the hostel, packed, and were ready even a little bit before the check-out time. After that we caught the bus over to La Boca, the cool, colorful neighborhood that is famous in Buenos Aires. I haven’t been able to get an answer yet so I don’t know the correct story behind all of the colors, but it’s so cool! We really enjoyed just walking through the main tourist streets and looking at all of the artisan booths. La boca is known for it’s art and for being the birthplace of tango, and we definitely saw both of those in our short time there! The art displayed and for sale was all beautiful and amazing, and there were tango dancers all over in the street. Most of them wanted you to take a picture with them (for a small fee, of course), but some of them were just dancing and it was really fun to watch. I loved walking around and looking at everything and could’ve stayed there all day, but after a couple of hours we decided to make our way over the Puerto Madero, another neighborhood. It was a little after noon but none of us were hungry, so we decided to walk instead of take a taxi so by the time we got there we would be ready to look for a place to have lunch. I was glad we walked because we walked right by the Boca Juniors fútbol stadium! Boca Juniors is one of the two major soccer teams in Buenos Aires, and is coached by Maradona (the current coach for Argentina’s World Cup team). Since I had had to do my report in 318 on Argentine soccer I knew all about this, so it was really exciting to see it! After half an hour or so we arrived in Puerto Madero and could immediately sense the difference between the two neighborhoods. As La Boca (except for the main two tourist roads) is known for being a very poor neighborhood, Puerto Madero is known for being home to a higher class of residents and has recently been renovated. It was nice to see the architecture and the modern styles mixed with old warehouse looks, but other than that there wasn’t much to do there. We had planned on eating, but it was an expensive area already and all of the restaurants had upped the prices even more for Día de la Bandera, so we decided to go back to San Telmo and find somewhere to eat. Puerto Madero is right next to San Telmo so the walk wasn’t bad at all, and we found a nice little café and ordered the best pizza ever! After lunch we walked back to the hostel to hang out until we needed to leave for the bus station. Pretty much everywhere, excluding some grocery stores, kioscos, and a few restaurants, was closed for the holiday so there wasn’t much else that we could do. After hanging out for a while we got our bags and walked to the subway station. We left early because we had planned on getting coffee and hanging out for a little while at a famous old café in the train station (which is right next to the bus station). From the looks of the place through the windows this would have been a great idea, except for the fact that it, too, was closed for the holiday. We were rather disappointed but there was nothing we could do about it, so we decided to head on to the bus station to see if there was anything there. Although not as classy and definitely not as cool, we found a little coffee place in the bus station and ordered café con leches and some pastries and hung out and talked and worked on homework until it was time to go get on our bus. Despite the horror stories I had heard about navigating the Buenos Aires bus station, we found our bus very easily and departed for Córdoba right at 9:35pm. After our long, exciting weekend I was exhausted and easily passed out for the entire ride back to Córdoba. The trip had been wonderful, but it was unfortunately time to go back to “real life”…aka class.