Day Trip to Piriapolis

Today I took a day trip to a small beach town called Piriapolis. It's about 90 kilometers due east of Montevideo. Here are the pics:

View of the beach and water from the Ramblas, which basically means promenade in Spanish. We have a Ramblas in Montevideo, too:



Me on the Ramblas:



Eating lunch in town across from the beach. Cecile came with me as did two other classmates, Dahlia (right) and Helena (left, next to me). Dahlia is a NYer like me and Helena is Norwegian:



Cecile on the beach:



Pretty stones in the water:


We took a ski lift up to the top of this hill overlooking Piriapolis:



At the top we got a beverage and enjoyed the view:




Shot of the town on the way down:




The homestay house I wish they'd given me:


It was about 90-95 degrees and the sun tired me out:


Almost time to go home.

Postcards from Montevideo

Me on the beach:



More beach shots:





The street my school is on. There are lots of streets here in MVD lined with these tall trees that lean in to form a canopy.

Buenos Aires: Food

This past weekend I met up with Kristen & Glenn in Buenos Aires. We left Sunday for Montevideo. For those of you not in the know, Kristen and I met freshman year in high school and became friends after bonding over the fact that we both had retainers.

Anyway, the centerpiece of our weekend - the jewel in the Buenos Aires crown, if you will - was our trip to an Argentinian steakhouse Saturday night.

This is us on our way to La Dorita, the steakhouse. And yes, it gave us endless amusement that it sounded like "Dorito", the American tortilla chip:



This is in Argentinian dictionaries under felicidad ('happiness'). Glenn put the fork in so that you can get a size comparison of how big the steak was:



Beefworshipers:



Contemplating joy:



Joy:



After finishing the meal, we lost Glenn for about 15 minutes. Kris and I chatted and had coffee while he stared off into space, deep in a food coma:



On Friday, we ate at a place near our hotels.

Like Uruguay, Argentina is a land of empanadas:



Platter of meat and cheese. Luckily we didn't order main dishes because we couldn't even finish it:



Happy and full:



They had pretty good coffee and it came on these cute wooden coasters:



A sign advertising the typical Argentinian breakfast: a coffee and 3 little croissants (medialunas, which means half moons). that's 10 Argentenian pesos, not 10 dollars. 10 Argentinian pesos is a little less than $3 US:



They have big empanadas called calzones. Okay I guess they are just calzones but I prefer to think of them as big empanadas:

Buenos Aires: La Cemetaria

One of the main attractions in Buenos Aires is a huge, ornate cemetery in the city center. Below are some pics, including Evita's resting place. I don't know what any of these are, but it's pretty cool looking so I thought I'd post:

Evita's tomb:




Little known Buenos Aires fact: this tomb was the original inspiration for the classic musical Jesus Christ Superstar