Buenos dias from Buenos Aires

We have arrived in Buenos Aires after a long uncomfortable night on the plane. The seats were closer together than any plane either of us has ever been on. The guy's head in front of me was basically in my lap! Luckily, Kier had her trusty pre-loaded french press ready to go.

We took a taxi to the hotel rather than hang around the airport for several hours waiting for the group. Taxis here drive as crazily as they do at home. The hotel is lovely. We have a cute little room, and WONDERFUL pillows on the beds.

After changing into shorts and sandals, we headed out to explore the city. We were in desperate need of some more coffee and a snack, so we made our destination Cafe Tortoni, the oldest cafe in the city.
We walked down Via Florida, the main pedestrian street. It was extremely busy and vendors were shouting and shoving flyers in our faces. It was a little much given how tired we were. Cafe Tortoni though was a lovely haven. It was a grand, big space with pictures of all the famous patrons over the years on the walls. Kier had un caffe con lece and tried the lece mereingata, which turned out to be a type of gelato with fresh cinnamon. Nancy had churros with chocolate, which are fried dough sticks. It took us several minutes to realize that the people at the table next to us were statues!

Revitalized by the sugar and caffeine, we took off walking again, stopping often to admire the crafts the street vendors were selling. We found plaza di Mayo, which had examples of architecture from nearly every culture. There was the Spanish colonial building, a traditional grand cathedral, the large "Casa Rosa," which houses the current government, and a gothic looking parliment building.
You'll have to trust us that it's lovely because we just realized neither of us has a camera cord to plug into this laptop! Hopefully we'll be able to find one here before we get on the boat. Now Kier is heading out on her first group training run (and she's very nervous because everyone else looks very hard core, and it's HOT out!) GO FOR IT, KIER!