Around the Neighborhood

Hotel of Melía is located in the Recoleta area of Buenos Aires. The neighborhood is nothing like I have ever experienced before considering everything is right in front of us or a couple blocks away. The streets are narrow and cars speed by at a quick speed; usually taxis and buses take up most of the room available to travel.

On either side of "la calle" or "the road" are sidewalks that people are able to window shop and walk on. Sometimes you have to be careful though, because the sidewalks will often have some cracks and missing parts, but it is nothing more than a simple repair needed to fix it. No matter what time of the day there are always people walking, socializing, or traveling. The most popular time that I have seen it so far is around lunch time. Maybe it is because many tourists are here the same time as us, but there are still many Spanish speaking people roaming around too. At night you can find stray dogs also sniffing around and homeless people sleeping on old mattresses or cardboard near closed stores. Along with dump trucks picking up trash and restaurant owners on the weekday sweeping up the trash leftover from their last meal served.

 

The neighborhood is designed like a city back home would be, where there are many small roads that connect to the main road such as Avenue Callao or Avenue del libertador. Although it may seem overwhelming at times to try and navigate around this bustling place, it isn't too complicated! Well that is if you remember key places or shops that you saw along the way, but even then it all connects together someway or another in a square shape. Speaking of shops, close to us is also La Florida which is a strip of small shops that sell a variety of different things. Interacting with the people can get ugly if you aren't able to create a conversation in Spanish and can often lead to embarrassment, but some people in the businesses are able to speak a small amount of English. It sometimes gets difficult when pesos and dollars, however this is something that we are learning through experience everyday. As the days have gone by though I personally have started to grasp onto certain things about the culture and language that I hadn't known before which I love; all you have to do is spend an hour walking around and letting it all soak in for a little while.

 

Right across the street from us as you step outside the door, there are a few local restaurants and bars. Bar Bull and Pub are two of these food and drink options that we have available to us. Both allow people to dine outside on tables with blue and yellow umbrellas whenever they desire to get a sit-down meal. Although I have personally not had the chance to dine in for lunch or dinner yet, both seem to serve quite often throughout the day. Not even a block down the road is a 25 hour convenient store which has many sodas and drinks, along with candy, cookies, chips, gum, etc. I know you are probably reading this thinking I made a typo and said 25 instead of 24, but that is the way it is in Argentina! No matter what time of the day, you can always run there and check out any snacks that they have to offer.

 

I am sure that within the next few days here more will be learned about the surrounding neighborhood, but this is what I have encountered since being emerged into Buenos Aires!