Posts Tagged ‘holiday’

The culture in Istanbul is a very interesting mix resulting from a blend of two cultures: Ottoman and Roman. It was the capital of each empire for a time, and absorbed a lot from both cultures. While we were visiting, we got to experience a side of Istanbul that is unusual for us as we came from predominantly Christian areas of the US: Ramadan.

Blue Mosque

Well, we have about 30 mintues until we´re off on a 47 hour bus trip heading south to Ushuaia and there´s a lot we could still say about our time in Buenos Aires.  I´ve had an unfortunate couple of days with a yucky stomach bug and on top of that I managed to explode our plug adaptor.  Pretty big spark there.  Despite all of that we had an awesome Valentine´s Day picnic with some bread, cheese and bubbly and we´re very excited for the next step in our adventure.

Favorite Empanadas in Buenos Aires

Empanadas are everywhere in Buenos Aires and they are a delicious snack.  This place had our favorites so we´d often run off there on our break from Spanish class.  They have a ton of different kinds.  My favorite were the Caprese – little pastries full of cheese, basil and tomato, but the beef ones were yummy too.

We´re already missing our Spanish class.  We learned so much and had 2 really great teachers over the 3 weeks.  We learned a lot about Argentina and our communication skills definitely improved.  Both of us were tempted to stay longer in order to learn even more. 

Spanish Class with Alejandro

Last week we finally made it out to tango at La Viruta where we had a yummy dinner with a view of the dance floor then took a tango lesson.  Awesome!  There were so many amazing dancers there and we had a great time watching them.  We didn´t really get the typical tourist show, but we saw a lot of real tango.

View from our table - sorry it´s blurry

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We’re settling into a pretty awesome routine here in Buenos Aires.  Lots of sitting in cafes and studying, lots of good food, and lots of Spanish classes.  I’m very behind on emails, but will try to get caught up in the next few days.

We spent the past weekend exploring the city and had a really great time looking around.  Friday night was swing dance night and we were really pleased to discover that we could understand a LOT more of the Spanish than the week before.  On Saturday we went out to Palermo, the fancy area of town, on the Subte (Subway) and explored the giant complex of parks there.  We had thought to go to the Planetarium, but it was closed for renovation.  Instead we wandered around the rose garden and botanical garden and saw the outsides of the zoo and the racetrack.  These parks are truly enormous and really well kept up.  There were a lot of people lounging in the shade with picnics and it was a really pleasant place to hang out.

Click for Palermo Parks Gallery

On Sunday we had a busy day exploring the street market in San Telmo and going to the New Year celebration in Barrio Chine (Chinatown).  The street market was really colorful and fun to explore.  It was also a surprise to us that it was pretty low-key even though it was really large.  People were very laid-back and there wasn’t much persuasion to buy anything.  San Telmo is a cool old neighborhood, but I didn’t take too many pictures since it was pretty full of people.  In the afternoon we took a long subway ride and made it to Barrio Chine.  This was a bit of a disappointment since it was completely packed with people.  We could hardly even move, let alone look around.  We did get to see a dragon, but not a very good view.

Chinese New Year Celebration - Click for photo gallery

We’re dancing again tonight and starting to work on our plans for leaving the city.  I have to admit, it would be pretty easy to get sucked into spending quite a lot more time here.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Turkey Trotters (minus Justin since he was taking the photo)

We started out the day today by running in the Turkey Trot in downtown San Jose.  We did the 5k, but they also have a 10k and tons of people showed up in the perfect (but chilly) weather.  They were saying that there were 14,500 runners there and it was a very festive atmosphere!  There was a costume contest and the people watching while running made the 53 minutes it took me to run it go a lot faster.  Justin was a champ and finished in 29 minutes!  Our friends do this run every year and if we were sticking around I think we’d add it to our traditions too.  Thanks John and Cynthia for sharing your tradition!

Victory is ours!!! And now the turkey will be too....

This year for Halloween we went as obnoxious tourists.  Hopefully this means we know what NOT to do while we’re traveling!