Holidays in Buenos Aires
Monday, December 22nd, 2008Hello All,
First I am sorry for not updating this blog since early December. Those of you who know me know that in addition to running Pangea Collection, I also teach two days a week. The end of the year means lots of marking and that kept me pretty busy for the last couple of weeks.
In addition to finishing up the semester I also needed to finalise all my travel plans for a trip to South America. Joe and I are now in Buenos Aires. We arrived on Monday after an overnight flight. Luckily we were in business class (thanks for aeroplan) so the 11 hour flight was livable. Although I didn’t sleep a wink, I could at least be comfortable.
Before leaving for Buenos Aires I had read a number of posts which indicated that we needed to be extremely careful not to be robbed/mugged. As you know, I have traveled quite a lot save one place in the world (I won’t mention where), I had never really felt in danger.
I have a insight about feeling safe in a place (whether that’s a city or not). I believe it has to do with familiarity. After reading all these posts about what you should and shouldn’t do and where you should and shouldn’t go. I admit I became down right paranoid.
Our hotel is near Calle Florida and I had read that this street is a common street for muggings etc. Our first walk on the street made me pretty uncomfortable. Then in the days that followed (we’ve now been here for 6 days) I became more and more familiar with the city and more and more comfortable. Having said that, we still are not waving cash out in public and we are not wearing expensive jewellery (I never travel with jewellery anyway, read my post on travelling with jewellery). We are being aware and carrying a small amount of cash. So far so good. Fingers crossed we’ll leave tomorrow for wine country without incident and be sipping wine by the pool.
Chin chin, sante, cheers and all that.
Have a wonderful holiday too!
Patricia
