Buenos Aires, Argentina Days 11 and 12

Man,

We’re in the last hours of Argentina, it was a lot of fun but I think we are all pretty tired and beat up from the trip. On Thursday we ended up eating at a nearby cafe/diner type of an establishment and then going right to sleep since we knew that Friday was going to be a long hard day(of shopping) The morning was gloomy and guess what? It rained again. I swear I do not remember seeing this much rain on any other vacation.

We decided that we will hit the leather district instead of sight seeing since the weather was not on our side. The shopping here is nothing short of wonderful. Between all of us we bought 5 pairs of shoes/boots, 3 purses, 3 coats, 2 wallets, and a belt. The boys thought that they were in the last circle of hell since we got to the leather shops at around 11:30 and left at around 6:30. Before you get horrified and feel sorry for them I will add that we had to spend about 1.5 hours for lunch due to the fact that a soup we ordered wasn't ready and had to be cooked from scratch. Also let me add that Sereja got a wallet and Ilyusha got himself some shoes and a nice winter leather jacket, so it wasn’t just us girls shopping.

After we finally got back to the hotel all we had time for was to change and catch a quick breath before catching another cab and going to our last dinner in Argentina. We went to Las Lillas, which was an insanely posh restaurant recommended by Shar. We all had fillet mignon and it was amazing. Our dinner lasted for about 2.5 hours. And we had a great time. Might I add that we could call it FND since the Chicago FND was canceled due to lack of participants? :-).

After the dinner we went to Cafe Torttoni - another recommendation by Shar. We had a table that was touching the stage. It was amazing. The show consisted of intervals of Tango dancing, and singing. Not everyone liked the singer, but I thought she was ok. At one point the dancers went into the audience to dance with them and the woman picked Ilyusha. He did the right steps and looked amazing. We cheered him on and took lots of pictures of course. The singer also went into the crowd and started asking people where they were from. Most patrons seemed to be tourists from other South American countries. When she got to us and we said that we were from the US the room had very sparse applause. We figured that as long as they didn't boo us we were doing fine. Our original plan was to go out for drinks after the show, but we were so tired that we just caught a cab back to the hotel and fell into blissful oblivion.

This morning we dragged ourselves out of bed, ate breakfast and packed. After we dropped off our suitcases by the front desk we went to the tango district, because Ilyusha needed to buy some tango shoes as presents. There were other people in the store and when they found out we were from the US they actually acted excited and started jumping up and down. One of them actually came up to me and Olya and asked if we knew any celebrities like Richard Gere. We told him that we didn’t but it still felt nice to not be hated by the locals.

Feeling celebrity like ourselves we made our way to Palermo Soho (the final recommendation of Shar). It was a great little neighborhood. There was an art/craft fair and little shops with really different fashionable clothes. It was very pleasant to walk around there and we were very sorry we didn’t have more time to spend there. This is the part of Buenos Aires I found to be nice and friendly. It had a really good vibe. Unfortunately we had to go because we reserved a tour of the Teatro Colon.

The tour spanned about 7 floors. The theater is amazing and we got to see the ballet practice for Romeo and Juliet. We also saw the prop workshop, shoe makers, costume rooms and sat in box seats. Everything was beautiful. I was really glad that we saved the tour for last. Now we are just waiting by the hotel to be picked up and taken to the airport. We will have coffee with Shar and that will be the end of our wonderful trip. WE are really not looking forward to the plane ride. Unless we have something happen to us at the airport, this is the last of our vacation emails. I apologize for not answering your emails individually, but then I would be at the INTERNET cafe all day and would have nothing to write about. Thanks for your emails and I appreciate the patience it must take to even skim my long novel like letters. See you all back home!