Monday, February 25, 2008

Buenos Aires II, Night 5

I wrote this on the plane after leaving Buenos Aires:

I'm trying to remember where I left off. I believe it was Thursday morning. I checked out of the hotel at around 8:50 am in the area just outside of where we always meet for breakfast. I planned to run inside real quickly to get a few muffins for the road, but while I was waiting for a to-go tin I saw the rest of my colleagues there eating, so I joined them. After wolfing down a few muffins, I was all set to leave, but the dweeb had to run back to his room. Because of this, we didn't leave until around 9:30 - past the time we were supposed to. You'll note who's fault this is, and that he was the one that was pushing for a 8:30 departure. Dork.

We're about 10 minutes into our ride driving adjacent to the Rio de la Plata when we get told to pull over the Argentine Naval police. THAT was fun! I had all my bags as well as my passport, so I wasn't all that worried. They had the party van pull over tot the side, and the diver gave him his carefully organized papers. An officer came on the bus and walked up and down the aisle. It was relatively uneventful, but kind of a cool story to tell.

We got to the new building and I began working. Working through the day actually. For lunch, we had empanadas. Very yummy, though we had takeout. I would have rather left the building for a little bit to take a break, but no worries. It was just before this time that I received an email from my boss. As you saw in earlier posts, I wound up staying. At this time, my boss is scrambling to find coverage for me, and I'm dealing with our Travel department to see if this is do-able. Turns out the flight would be a LOT more, and our hotel was sold out. Fantastic!

After getting approval from the proper executives, they changed my flight and I was booked in the Park Towers, which is the luxury hotel adjacent to the Sheraton. After we left the building for the day (which didn't happen until around 8 I think) we went back into the city and I checked in. After plopping my bags in the room, we met out front to head out to dinner.

We went to La Parolaccia, the Italian place, again. If you'll recall, this was the scene of the great Gnocchi-feast of January. I decided not to repeat that. Best line of the car-ride there? One of my Argentine Colleagues drove us, and in his VERY broken English he mentioned that he has twins…10 months old. The dweeb actually asked this: How old is the older one? Our colleague laughed it off…and he asked AGAIN! I swear, you all should really meet this guy. You'll laugh and cry at the same time.

We get there and one of our Buenos Aires friends from the new building joins us for the evening. That was cool. He's a really cool dude, and his English has gotten much better since the last time I was down there.

I ordered the Fettucini Verdi con Quatto Formagi. It was really good. I have a picture of it on my phone, I think. Very filling, but not as much as the gnocchi! We had some white wine along with it. For dessert I had tiramisu. I had to. I was going to get this other dessert, but the waiter said it would take 10 minutes to make. I decided that was enough reason to go with the old standby. I was not disappointed, but again, I really didn't really have room for dessert anyway. I was quite full when we left the table.

After that, we went back to the hotel. I went to my fancy new room. It was huge! I think the bathroom was bigger than my room in the other hotel. Separate little rooms in the bathroom for the toilet and the shower, and a separate tub. It also had a speaker in there hooked to the TV. I had some sprite (which I think was bad) and went to bed.

I'll have to write more tomorrow as the light are out on the plane and I'm a little tired.

Hasta luego!!

No comments: