Rosario, AR and last day at the Janzen's

Leana and I dropped the girls off at her friends place and took off for the 3rd largest city in Argentina, Rosario. Doug and Leana lived in Rosario when they first moved to Argentina almost 9 years ago. It is a beautiful city where I again, managed to do some shopping. There are so many gorgeous buildings that I had to take a few pictures.

After doing a bit of shopping, we found a hair salon and got our hair washed and straightened for about $10 each. Nice! After walking the 12 blocks of shopping streets that are blocked off to vehicles (the 2 top pictures above), we ended up at the National Flag Memorial (below - don't we look great with our freshly straightened hair-dos?).

This is the eternal flame and the Flag Memorial.

Here are some pics from the top of the Flag Memorial.

Funny story. When we got up to the top we walked out to one of the little balconies and I can't remember what we were chatting about but you could see the 2 guys in front of us stop what they were talking about and look at each other. They slowly turned around and when they say us they let out a loud, "Aaaaahhhh!" We just looked at them with this blank look on our faces and finally they said, "You speak English! Where are you from? What are you doing here?" They were suddenly very interested in us. We talked to them for a bit and when Leana finally told them she had been living in Argentina for 8 years, another gentleman pipes in and says, "Aaah, she tricked you. She wanted you to think she didn't speak Spanish!" We all had a good laugh and then walked away ... until we came to the next balcony and there they were again. Let me tell you, Argentine men are not shy. He looks at me with my camera and says, "Take a picture of us" and he takes my camera and hands it to his friend. We're standing there laughing and just as his friend is about to take the picture, he says, "Heads together!" and pulls us in for the picture below. It was quite funny. They did ask us to go dancing that night but we had to tell them we were heading back home. Phewf!

I thought the beautiful purple trees looked gorgeous next to the Merry-Go-Round.

The Memorial from the front.

It took me many attempts to get this picture of the flag flying just right.

And another shot from the front (different angle) because I couldn't decide which picture I liked better.

Aaaaah, the purple trees.

We went inside this church and we almost part of an infant baptism until we realized what was going on and that it was just for family. Oops!

As we walked back to our car, I looked up and saw this sign! Of course we had to go inside and find the store. I walked in and said, "Me nombre es Fiona" (yes, I said it in Spanish) and they were so cute. They handed me a bag and a sticker right away. I ended up buying some earrings from them. :)

We had enough time to stop for a "little" snack. I thought this looked lighter then the chocolate cake so we got this and man, was it sweet. Layers upon layers of dulce de leche (which is very similar to caramel) and then meringue on top. I LOVE sweet things so if you hear me say something is too sweet, it's off the charts. I ate as much as I could but got at least half of it wrapped up to go.

I also tried to get myself a bottled water at this place. Leana had been speaking for me almost the entire trip since she's fluent in Spanish, which is great, but I wanted to see if I could fend for myself. You'd think asking for bottled water (agua) wouldn't be so hard, right? Wrong! I went inside the restaurant (we were sitting on the patio) and put in my order (saying agua and using a bit of sign language) and they nodded to me. I asked (in English) if I should wait there or go back to my seat outside (pointing) and they pointed to my seat outside. I went back and waited ... and waited ... and waited. Finally, the waitress came outside and Leana asked her in Spanish and guess what? I got my bottled water. That really surprised me! I've done a lot of travelling and have been able to get by with English and sign language, so to not be able to get my own water was a shocker. Thanks goodness Leana is fluent.

After our wonderful day together, we picked up the girls and headed home. This is their wonderful home.

It's brand new and quite big. I forgot to get a picture of their huge backyard.

We did nothing the next day except sit in the sun and chat. It was great ... until it was time for me to pack. :( Doug came home that night and we all went out for supper.

Argentina is known for their bbq, so it was fitting that I had one of the best steaks ever that night. Look how thick it is!

We took a few last pics together ...

and I took a couple of their family when we got home ... sometimes dogs just don't cooperate. :)

There we go! Much better. What a beautiful family.

Leana drove me back to Rosario at 2:45 in the morning because my bus left at 4:30 (it's an hour drive) and off I went back to Bue.nos Air.es to catch a plane for the next 3 days of my adventure.

Bye Lea! At this point I was hoping I'd see the whole family again in Bue.nos Air.es before I flew out, but we weren't sure.

Stayed tuned for my solo adventure at Igu.azu Falls.

My week in Victoria, AR

The next morning we walked around a bit more and then Lea and I hopped on a bus bound for her place so I could meet her two little girlies. It was a 4 hour bus ride and I wanted to see some of the landscape, however, after 15 minutes of looking pretty much the same as Sask.atchewan, I took a little nap. I was jealous of Lea would doesn't get sick while reading and driving so I listened to my i.Pod. When it got too dark for her to read, we shared my i.Pod and listened to Dane Co.ok and laughed so hard I'm sure the people around us were wondering what the heck we were laughing at. Oh well, we had fun. :)

We got to her town, Victoria, quite late so the girls were already asleep. I visited for awhile with Doug, Lea's hubby, seeing as he was leaving in the morning to go on a speaking engagement for a week.

I wasn't awake when the girls went to school (hey, I'm on vacation, ok?) so I went with Lea to pick them up from school. Salome played a bit shy at first but Cristina was my buddy right from the get go. Soon, Salome warmed up to me and we were all best friends. :)

The only thing that I had to get used to was having supper at 8 pm-ish. After the first day I remembered to snack a little around 5:30 and then I was good to go for the rest of the days. Luckily for me, meat and potatoes is a common meal here so I had no trouble with the food on this trip. :)

The next day we decided to go for a drive so they could show me around town. First, we drove up to the top of the highest hill in town to see the view of the river ... and of course so the girls could pick some flowers.

I just love these pics of the girls. What cute sisters!

Then we decided to go down to the beach at the river.

Awww, what a beautiful Mother and Daugthers picture.

We had lots of fun at the beach ... playing in the sand, looking at the gorgeous scenery ...

and watching Abby chase the birds ...

until I started getting bit by mosquitos, so it was time to head home ... but not before I got my pic taken with these beauties.

Then, it was time to go get some ice cream. That would be dulce de leche on the top and bubble gum on the bottom. Yum-my! The start of my dulce de leche feast began that day.

Next we took Salome to her tennis lesson (I love the pic first pic of her on her tippy toes - she's really working for it!). So cute.

And we took Cristina to her ballet lesson. How adorable is this?

The next day while we were waiting for the girls to finish school (they go from 8 am - 12 pm), we drove around town, picked up some groceries (ham & cheese empanadas are yummy) and Lea took me to this monument of the virgin. I was going to go stand beside it and entitle it "The Two Virgins" but I decided against it. ;)

I just LOOOOOVE the purple trees. So pretty!

This is a picture of the school the girls go to. Next year it will celebrate it's 200th birthday. Cool building, hey?

We picked up some YUMMY treats for dessert after lunch. I believe almost all of them have dulce de leche in them.

That night we went to the town square and walked around for a bit.

I just love this picture of the girls. You can see the mischievousness in Salome's face in this one. hee hee

The church in the square at night.

Lea took me to a lot of shops around the square and I did a TON of shopping. Much jewellery and souvenirs were picked up on this day. I kept saying to Lea, "Stop taking me into such great shops! Danger, danger!" :)

When I was finally done shopping, we went for scrumptious foot long hot dogs for supper.

That night after the girls had gone to bed, I got showed Leana where to find Gl.ee online and now her AND Doug are hooked! :) We're all Gleeks at hearts, aren't we?

Didn't do much the next day except that Leana made me a roast for lunch (lunch is their big meal of the day) and it was SUPER yummy! Thanks, Lea!

This picture SOOOOO emcapsulates little Salome. Funny, with some fire in her. Love this face! I could just pinch those cheeks!

The next day Leana took me into Rosario, however, I'll save that post for tomorrow.

It takes 2 to tango! :)

Final bow

What a fun evening.

And so this concludes my first 3 days in Argent.ina. More to come!

Argentina!!!

Literally the day after the U2 concert, I headed to the airport and got on a plane for Argentina! These were my first glimpses of the Argentine life I was going to live for the next 2 weeks.

My first surprise was how little English was spoken. I tried to talk to my cab driver and he just gave me a blank stare. Sooooo, that was a 45 minute silent ride to my hotel. Once I got to the hotel, their English was a little better. I went to the room and had a little rest while I waited for Leana to arrive. She was only about 1/2 an hour behind me so I didn't have too long to wait. She knocked on the door and I heard, "Helloooooo." I recognized her voice right away and we had a great reunion. Sat and chatted for awhile and then off into Bue.nos Air.es we went. We literally sat at the restaurant and talked ... then walked around looking for some place to have ice cream ... then sat there and talked some more and then went back to the hotel because I was exhausted.

In the morning, our breakfast we included in our stay, so we went around the corner to the restaurant where our vouchers were to be used and this is what we had for breakfast.

6 croissants, orange juice and Cafe Con Leche (coffee with milk) for Lea. Very yummy.

After breakfast we took our trusty map and headed down the street in search of the Cementerio in La Recoleta. Sometime in the summer, my "1000 places to visit before you die" calendar had this place as one of the places to visit because this is where Av.a Pero.n (Ev.ita) is buried. We walked into the cemetary and it was a HUGE maze. As we searched for her grave, we found these other amazing resting places of apparently very important people.

Since these graves were so well adorned, we couldn't image what we would find when we finally found Av.a's grave. We searched and searched (oh, and by this time it had started raining - luckily Lea had thought to bring her umbrella) and even though we had a map of the maze, we had to ask quite a few people. When we finally found it, this is what we saw:

If no one had told me where it was, I would've walked right by it. I was very surprised that for one of the only people I had ever heard of from Argentina (who a movie had been made about), her resting place was nothing as special as all the other ones we had seen. It was a strange feeling walking around this place and we said we definitely wouldn't want to walk around there after dark.

After that tour, we hopped on a bus that was going to take us on a tour of the entire city. As we stopped and picked up more people, the rain picked up as well. At least it was a warm rain.

But we didn't let that dampen our spirits. Here we are at La Ca.sa Rosa.da (Spanish for "The Pink House" - the American's have The Wh.ite House and the Argentine's have The Pink House). The balcony we're standing under is where Evi.ta gave many speaches from. The Argentine government even allowed the filming of the famous “Don’t cry for me Argentina” scene in the movie Evi.ta to take place on the actual balcony. I think I'm going to have to rent that one again now that I've been there.

Our next stop (after letting off the old lady who puked in the back of the bus - poor thing) was in the area called La Bo.ca (mouth of the river). The colourful buildings in the pictures below are a street called Camin.ito. The pictures in the bottom right are of the Bo.ca Stadium which is known among sports fans for La Bombonera, the home of Bo.ca Juniors, one of the world's best known football (soccer, to us) clubs. It was raining quite hard at this time so although I did of course manage to do a bit of shopping, we didn't spend too much time here.

Leana's saying for the day (which ended up being the saying for the whole trip) was, "I think it getting brighter out there," meaning, "I think the rain's letting up." Sometimes she was right, but most of the time it was only a dream. After the tour, our bus dropped us off at a gorgeous mall and Leana got herself some Star.bucks. She was quite happy about that. :) After that we hopped on the subway and headed home.

Just thought I'd show you a couple pictures of our fun hostel. Our power went out that night for about 2 1/2 hours but we just sat in our room with my little reading lamp and chatted and chatted.

The next day we went walking again (how come walking when you're on vacation is expected and not a bother, but I never do it at home except for purposely trying to get some exercise - not just for getting from point A to point B?). Today we were in search of the market. On our way, we passed by this cute man with his dog and when I stopped to take a picture, a lady passed by and said, (in Spanish) "They are both old and good." SO cute!!!

Then, we found ... the market. I don't know if you can see it very well, but in the bottom, middle picture below, the market is along the edge. It was just a bunch of stahls set up with many fun things to look at and of course, to buy. I bought some jewellery here and a great shawl. I bought the shawl from the lady in the picture with me in the bottom right. She was very sweet. I think her name was Carmen, if I remember correctly.

Then we hopped back on the subway (because if it was too far to walk, that was our 2nd choice of transportation) and headed to another mall. Here we are in the subway.

That night we got all gussied up and headed for supper and then to a tango show.

The tango show was awesome. At first it started out with a lot of great dancing and then the owner came out and started talking ... in Spanish ... and talking ... and talking. I had been told that the show was an hour and a half, so after he'd been speaking in Spanish for half an hour, I was getting a little bored and ticked that this guy was speaking in a language I couldn't understand when I wanted to see more dancing! Leana was being great and trying to interpret as much as she could, but he just kept going on and on. Finally, when he was turning in our direction, I purposely put my head against the pillar beside me and looked away as if to look bored. I thought maybe it would click in his head that most people here would be tourists and possibly not speak Spanish. Well, it clicked in his head, but instead of getting on with the show, he STOPPED the show and started speaking DIRECTLY TO ME! He looked right at me and said, "Do you not speak Spanish?" I didn't think he was speaking to me so I just kind of stared back at him and finally said, "Me?" He went on to dim the house lights and put just a spot light on me and proceeded to chat with me for what felt like FOREVER. He asked where I was from, told me to move my chair closer, "No, even closer" and then asked if he could sing to me (which ended up just being "la, la, la" but it was pretty embarrassing none the less.

Finally, they got back to the dancing ...

which was amazing. The pictures are pretty dark because we weren't supposed to be taking pictures so I didn't use my flash. They recreated the scene from Moulin Rouge where they danced and sang "Roxanne" and then sang, "Don't Cry For Me, Argenti.na." I'm going to try to upload that video now.

Season's Greetings! ;)

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Snowball fight!!! Michael & I will take all y'all on!!! :)

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