An evening in Buenos Aires

The first post on this trip is here..

Before I start writing about our first evening in Buenos Aires, a few things for my fellow travelers. We went to BA with a stop over at Mexico city from SFO. 

For some strange reason, there is no concept of transit in Mexico City airport. Given every page in my passport is precious (and every renewal costs time and money), I like to avoid unnecessary stamping. We were not given a choice after landing in Mexico city and were directed to go through immigration. Luckily there were no baggage to transfer or we would not have made it. All we had was carry on bags! 

We stood in a long line (which moved okay) and there were most confused international travelers and no one to answer their questions. I asked the immigration officer why we had to get a stamp when we were clearly transit passengers and he acted like he didn't understand me. The family was pulling my jacket saying "don't start something you will regret. Let's go to the next gate as fast as possible!".. so off we went. 

Mexico city seems to be sprawling and beautiful from the sky! Someday we have to visit the place and see what sights are there to see around it. 

We did get to spend 30 minutes in a lounge as our connection was a little late. There we were introduced to what I call "Corn kuzhal".. basically thenkuzhal made with corn flour. It was tasty! Surprisingly have never had this before in the US.

We landed in BA and it was raining like crazy! Took an Uber to our hotel, Faena, which was located in what was being described by the cab driver as kind of a Bandra of BA called Porto Madera.  Land reclaimed from the water and fancy residences, and commercial real estate built on it. Apparently Messi had his apartment in this area (we were thinking.. sure Messi probably has apartments all over BA)! Our kids are not easy to impress as the driver soon found out. 

The hotel was fantastic. There was a catch. No microwave, hot water kettle or Fridge in the room. The staff brings you hot water, warms up any food you give to them to put in their common fridge.. you get the idea. They were very courteous and nice, but you had to give them a 10 minute heads up. It still worked out okay. 

We had warm idlis and packed pulav for lunch, made an early dinner reservation at Marcelos , a fine Italian place on the river front (where we were told there are veggie options) and had two hours to spend to walk around the riverfront. 

We sat at a local restaurant chain called La Panera Rosa (with pink umbrellas!) and had tea and hot chocolate.. interestingly, in BA, they call it a SubMarino where they give you frothy milk and a bar of Cocoa which you have to drop into the tall glass and stir.. it drops to the bottom and rises like a submarine is our guess... 

They put locks on the wires around the bridges.. we didn't get to ask anyone on why.. it did look pretty.

It was very windy and nice and we walked on both sides of the river, had a great dinner and headed back to the hotel. 

The view from our table was amazing!

The little one had had enough and wanted to rest.

We still had the rest of the night. So we made plans after dropping her to go on a night to remember.. 

Buenos Aires is beautiful! 

A short video of the evening..

The day before we flew out, the Peso had dropped to 50% of its value. We did not know how that would impact our trip. We did find that most things like Uber rides were really cheap. Food in fancy places were as pricey as expected. The people we interacted with were going about their lives, but they were very hospitable and extremely nice to tourists. We really enjoyed the local people and their culture. It was lovely. Just for that alone, would recommend folks visit this city!

Santorini bus tour : ending with Sunset at Oia

The previous post on this series is here..

First.. our own Sangeetha Kaif walking down the famous steps.. 

oh wait? who is that dude? My god, she is married?

now what is that? She has two grown up kids as well? say what?!

Let's just keep the pretty lady in the pic! 

Sunset in Oia was a hit and miss. The clouds moved in. There was going to be no sun visible. The possibility of a glorious sunset like the one we saw at Poseidon's temple.. was not going to happen. It was going to rain possibly for the night and the next. Still golden hour is golden hour and we got amazing family photos.

We had to stand in a long line to get to this famous photo spot, which happens to be someones backyard on the hills in Oia village. This is their walking path! How or why it became a famous photo spot and when, we don't know! All we know is that Hindi actress Katrina Kaif runs around this place in movies .. other famous actresses might have shot in same location as well.. my wife and MIL have the exact details. 

My promise was to find this location and get pictures in that spot at sunset! Mission accomplished to the best of my ability given I cannot control the clouds. Then messed it all up with some indecisiveness. For some strange reason, picked up a faint orange tinge in the clouds and thought, maybe, maybe the sun will peak out and create magic. The rest of the family was pretty sure that everything was done and dusted. The little one was hungry and I made everyone walk back and forth for no reason for a good 15 minutes. 

To top things off, we had to make a dash to the bus stop below the hill before that dude was going to take off!

We did get a few more photos..

We were all happy one moment and pissed off within 20 minutes. Finally we made it to the bus when it was still bright. There were folks who got off in Oia and were not going back to Fira and that confused our guide and driver. So we lost some time in that but eventually the bus made it back to Fira and dropped off people in different hotels on the way. 

The approach road was jammed! So our driver took a roundabout route and eventually got us in. We were starving. The kids had noticed a restaurant called Convivium.. so we went there to the rooftop to get seated. Somehow the staff there didn't think we were their customer material and were hell bent on sending us out. We did not feel welcome and walked out. Very rare for us to walk out of restaurants after sitting down. 

Eventually we wandered back to the main street in Fira and they got something to go at the McDonalds! I ate fries and made Maggi. That was good enough after a long day! Maggi noodles has become comfort food for me and the little one now!

We were just exhausted after that and crashed. We had one more day in Santorini as a local sightseeing day before flying off.. even planning for it was put off till next morning!

A very short video of our time at Oia.

A Bus tour in Parts - Emporio and Perissa Black sand beach

The previous post in this series is here..

After the ruins our next stop was the largest village in the middle of Santorini island called Emporio. It included a small castle, beautiful small walkways (that reminded me of the Galli's of Varanasi) and a village center with a rebuilt Church.

This all blue and white combination gave us the best family pictures on this trip.. 

we had a good laugh over this sign..there was a lot of potential at this place.. but a lot of hard work to be done.. given my history of house remodeling projects, the family kept mocking me for a good 10 minutes..

fortunately we arrived at the next photo spot 

The whole place seemed to be desolate with no inhabitants (a few of these old places are now Airbnb's apparently) but we did not see a single resident in that walk. 

After touring the old Emporio area, we walked back down and headed to Perissa. Saw this "cheese" church on the way down!

There is a beautiful black sand beach here and a lot of eating places around the beach. If you eat in a restaurant, they let you use the beach umbrellas for free (in some cases 10 Euros).

We observed that most of the folks who were waiters and ushers in these restaurants were Syrian. There is some Syria Greek connection we don't know about. These folks were extremely nice and kept making jokes and made us laugh as we tried to decide our lunch location..

it was a bad idea to go into the water after a heavy lunch.. but went into the water with the kids for a good 30 minutes. That was part of the tour and the break. Almost everyone in our group had someone from the family go into the water as the rest of the party sat on the reclining chairs and were taking photos of their feet while sipping drinks!

Jr. ventured into the water with me (as did the little one for some time) and took pics of me doing yoga poses on rocks. One of these is very slippery and I got my legs cut up in a few places.. 

It was a pleasant afternoon, thanks to the clouds!

Post water, we had some yummy ice cream and we drove off to our next stop! 

 

We said bye to Aquarius and started back on the bus tour to the next stop..

saw more churches and blue domed houses on the way..

A short video of this segment of the trip..

The next stop was a drive up the hill to the tallest point on the other side of the island with a lot of weird history!