Argentina – July/August 2008

OK, so after being told a few too many times to get back to it, I’m writing a BRIEF update of my time in Argentina…

On our way to Buenos Aires (BA), my fellow auditors and I (total of 5 – 4 girls and 1 poor guy) decided to go to Patagonia for the weekend. The Chilean side was cheaper, so that’s where we went. Of course we didn’t take into account a heft $135 reciprocity fee that Chile nails you with when you arrive at the airport. That was a fun little surprise. The good thing is that it’s valid for the life of your passport, so if you have a new one like me – I have 10 years to go back! I actually intend to because after spending one weekend in Santiago, I decided that I wanted to see more of Chile.

Patagonia was beautiful! It reminded me of a mixture between Switzerland and Alaska. We got a package deal, so we went to the following places:
Flew into Puntas Arenas
Drove to Puerto Natales (stayed overnight)
Drove to Torres del Paine National Park

The only unfortunate thing is that we went during their “winter season” (our summer time), which has very few tourists, and most things are closed. Specifically, we wanted to go to a Penguin Colony, but it’s only open for a few months of the year.

One side note in Patagonia…be careful what you eat! I’m a little too adventurous and without even realizing that I may not be ordering something appropriate, I got SERIOUSLY sick on some calamari my last night in Patagonia. It probably wasn’t cooked properly, but I’ve never been so sickly in my life….I couldn’t sleep and I could barely function. I also had to deal with this lovely feeling almost the entire Sunday when I had to fly back to BA.

We arrived in BA only to find it cold and rainy…again thanks to the wonderful planning in our department – I missed my summer in Chicago for winter in BA.

My stomach was still a little sensitive, so I kept my eating pretty light despite my urge to get a nice juicy steak…after all, that is what Argentina is known for!

My former roommate Kristin paid me a visit for my first week out there. The first time anyone’s come to visit me on an audit! It was really nice because she’s extremely self-sufficient and planned her entire trip and daytime activities on her own.
Plus, I got some company when I came home from work every day!

Overall, I have to say that my time in BA was a little disappointing for several reasons.
1 – my expectations were entirely too high.
2 – I was disappointed in the food. I think partly because of expectations, but also because we were located close to Puerto Madero. A VERY touristy area with overpriced food that wasn’t really worth it.
3 – the weather pretty much sucked the entire time we were there. I have to say that the one weekend that we actually stayed in BA, the weather was nice and sunny and not too cold, so we explored some of the city and actually found some good places to eat and people watch.
4 – I’m not a night-person and these guys go out WAY too late! Turns out that most people don’t even START going out until 2am. Now after eating a late dinner at 9pm, coming back around 11pm – I still have 3 hours before going out? Obviously I fell asleep and didn’t even make it out the door.
5 – I’ve heard how cheap things are in Argentina and how great the shopping is, but I was also disappointed in that. Due to inflation, things weren’t really that cheap and the quality of the clothes and styles didn’t really appeal to me.
6 – There was some drama with a couple fellow co-workers, which definitely didn’t help my mood.

All in all, I might go back to Argentina, but only to explore other parts of the country.

I was pleasantly surprised by Chile though! Santiago in particular had a great night scene! I didn’t really eat out there so I’m not sure about the quality of the food, but they make some great Pisco Sours! – drinks native to Chile

We went to a little winery (very touristy but lots of fun) called Concha y Toro.
If we had more time (and money), I would’ve liked to go skiing as well, but I guess that’s what I’ll do when I go back to Chile within the next 10 years!

My last weekend in Argentina was by-far my favorite…Iguazu.
Iguazu borders 3 countries: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

We stayed on the Argentinean side since you need a visa to go to the Brazilian side (even though I’ve heard you can get there without it for a day)
Of course the first day we were there the weather was cloudy and drizzling, but day 2 was gorgeous!! The clouds parted enough to give us some faint rainbows while we walked along the paths to take pictures from various angles of the waterfalls. They were definitely the most massive waterfalls I’d ever seen!

We stayed in Iguazu (Puerto Iguazu to be exact) for 2 days/2 nights…in a hostel. I have to admit, my first real hostel. It wasn’t too bad except for all the mosquitoes and nats everywhere in our room. Since there were 3 of us, we got a private room with a private bathroom. The community area was kinda cool – they had boardgames and a tv (no tv in the room), and that’s also where we had a simple breakfast each morning. I hung out on the hammock by the pool at night while talking to Jason…very relaxing and I loved the atmosphere!

I’m definitely spoiled these days with my Marriotts and Sheratons cause it was pretty tough staying in that hostel. It was nice cause the location was great and the people were really friendly, but the bathroom was pretty disgusting.

All in all, that was my month-long trip to Argentina. Some ups and downs, but I wouldn’t mind going back to check out a few other places. Mendoza would be next on my list since I’m a huge fan of the Malbec wine from that region! I heard that the vineyards are amazing.

Sevilla: 6/6 – 6/8/08

Even though Sevilla is Spain’s 4th largest city, it definitely had a “small-town” feel.
Let me back-up to our fun-filled (and extremely long) drive to Sevilla from Madrid. True to my family tradition of driving everywhere, I opted to drive to Sevilla rather than fly or take a train. I had to come to Granada (also in the South of Spain) for 1 week for work, so I though – why not drive?
Jason, a fellow Internal Auditor, is on the Italy audit and decided to join me in Sevilla for the weekend. Since there’s a limited amount of money available to us for the weekends, we tried to save some money by me driving both of us to Sevilla. His flight got in around 9:30pm, so I picked him up at the Madrid airport and off we went!
It started out well, but turned into a little adventure. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a pretty decent sense of direction (thanks Dad!) and I absolutely hate getting lost!
Apparently no one in Spain really uses a map for driving and just relies on their GPS. I don’t really like to rely too much on technology, so I still printed up directions on http://www.viamichelin.com/. Actually a really great site for driving directions in Europe!
Unfortunately, between the darkness and the talking, I got a little distracted and at some point (probably when we stopped for dinner) the GPS reset itself and had a completely different address as the ending point! I didn’t think to check it and we followed the GPS for a good hour (through winding back roads and up and over mountains) before I became really uncomfortable with the emptiness of the roads. We checked the GPS and realized that we were still going South, but not to Sevilla!!
By this time, it was already around midnight (keeping in mind that the drive from Madrid to Sevilla is a 5 hour drive). It took us another hour to get back to the highway and on track, and we ended up FINALLY getting to our hotel in Sevilla at 4am.
On a positive note, I normally would have flipped out at the thought of getting lost, but I was more concerned with finding our way back and kept my cool…
Our hotel, Hotel Inglaterra, is located right in the Plaza Nueva in Sevilla, a really cute shopping square and a great location (walking distance from everything!) As June starts tourist season, most hotels were sold out. The hotel I really wanted to stay in (our fellow colleagues stayed there a couple months ago using points), was approx. $800/night and more Starwood points than I had! We ended up coming across it during our walk on Saturday and I can see why it cost so much! See the attached picture of the Hotel Alfonso below.
Picture of the Hotel Alfonso:
After an exhausting night, we both slept in until around noon and then grabbed some brunch before exploring the town. This time I was able to follow our walking tour as suggested in my Rick Steves’ Spain book…and I’m glad we did! What a gorgeous city!!! EXTREMELY clean (they have sanitation workers clean the streets on a nightly basis) and quiet city! There are approx. 700,000 locals and the rest are tourists. We walked around for almost 5 hours and saw the main Cathedral (gothic architecture and one of the largest of this kind in the world) as well as some gardens and just getting lost among the small streets. We stopped along the way to break from the heat and enjoy some ice cream and later in the day we enjoyed a nice, cold, refreshing beer on our way back to the hotel.

The Giraldi Belltower

one of the many plazas
Even with all the walking, this was one of the more relaxing and enjoyable weekends I’ve had…maybe part of it was the company. In the evening, we had reservations at El Arenal to enjoy a typical Flamenco dance ( show) while we ate Tapas dinner. The food wasn’t bad but the show was pretty amazing. They had 3 guitarists and 3 singers and what appeared to be a family of Flamenco dancers (both men and women). See the pictures attached below. The only other time I’ve seen people move their feet so fast was when I saw a traditional Irish Dance in Ireland (basically like the River Dance)!

my weekend companion and I pre-dinner/Flamenco show

Dinner and the show ended around midnight and since both of us were pretty exhausted…we opted out of the Sevilla night-scene and headed back to the hotel. We figured there would be plenty of time for that in Barcelona when we meet up again in a couple of weeks (along with 3 of my other colleagues coming from Italy).
There wasn’t much time to do anything on Sunday as Jason had to catch an early train back to Madrid to fly back to Rome. I hung around Sevilla a little longer to do some souvenir shopping and bought the CUTEST little Flamenco dresses for my nieces. All the regular stores were closed on Sunday, so I just relaxed with a Frap. And did some people watching in the Plaza before heading out for Granada.
The drive to Granada was actually pretty nice. The weather was great and the landscaping consisted of endless fields of sunflowers, mountains in the background, and tons of vineyards!

I’ll be in Granada for 1 week for work (during which I’ll be trying to do a little sight-seeing here as well) and then drive back to Madrid where I’ll catch a flight to Ibiza!!

Cute kid playing soccer (with his grandfather) w/an orange!

around town

Here are some more pics of Sevilla:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56292&l=3f07e&id=500066404

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56295&l=00178&id=500066404

The Rain in Spain….

Madrid - June 1, 2008

I arrived in Madrid a day early so I could spend some time doing a little sightseeing before work. Unfortunately, jet-lag got the best of me and all I was able to do was go to the Royal Palace in Madrid. I had also brought the rain to Madrid (so typical!), so I wasn’t really up for exploring much in the gross weather.
A few of my other colleagues came early as well, so Chuy and I decided to explore the city together on Sunday. After dragging myself out of bed, we took the Metro (Ruben Daria) which was 2 blocks from our Intercontinental Hotel to the city centre (Opera station). I bought a Rick Steves’ book on Spain and wanted to do a walking tour, but Chuy was still pretty jet-lagged and didn’t want to do too much. We walked to the Puerta del Sol area and grabbed some brunch first and foremost and enjoyed the weather outside while we ate. We noticed that there were tons of Policia cars – big vans like SWAT cars around the area and couldn’t figure out why. Well, we found out as we were finishing up our lunch. Apparently there was a protest scheduled (quite unusual for Madrid), and the police were there to regulate.
We heard a couple of shots (they were rubber bullets) and Chuy and I ran inside the restaurant to make sure we didn’t get involved in any of it. As we waited for things to die down, a fellow tourist (an Aussie) asked what was going on and we started talking.
Felicity turned out to be by herself for a couple days in Madrid prior to doing a 1 month tour of Europe with her sister. I know I would hate to be by myself, so I invited her to join Chuy and I as we headed over to the Royal Palace. Felicity, a 26-yr old registered nurse from Sydney, was moving to London after this 1 month tour of Europe. Once the protests dissipated, we headed to the Palace where we took a pretty informative 1-hour guided tour (definitely worth the extra 2 euro). It was a gorgeous palace and one of the 3 largest in the world, but unfortunately we weren’t able to take any pictures, so you’ll just have to use the "official website"

http://www.patrimonionacional.es/en/preal/preal.htm

That was pretty much our Sunday in Madrid. I would’ve like to do more, but jetlag had hit all of us and we weren’t feeling up to continue any more exploration of the city.
Felicity and I exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch. She’ll be in London when I go there for my UK audit in Nov/Dec, so it would be nice to have someone to go out with or show me around when I’m there! Really sweet girl…

Tuesday night...June 3, 2008

My tour book suggested a Tapas/Pub crawl in the central area of Madrid (between Puerta del Sol and the Plaza Santa Ana). I was able to talk a most of my coworkers (the women) into doing this tapas crawl with me. Not exactly what we expected as most of the places did not have seats and you just stood at a counter to have a beer or sangria with one or two plates of tapas.
The first place we stopped at was dedicated to Bull Fighting, La Taurina. Pictures everywhere and bull heads on plaques were mounted on the walls. Spain is really big on pork and seafood, so I opted for some calamari while Sonia, another coworker, got the grilled shrimp (soaked in garlic butter) and we all shared a pitcher of delicious Sangria!
Place #2 – the Museum of Ham…totally touristy, but we had to go. Obviously the chef specialty was anything ham, so I got a ham & cheese croquette while Tracy, one of my coworkers, got the Iberico Ham, and again – we all tried some of the tapas and each had a glass of Sangria. The employees were pretty nice to us and even gave us a few things “complimentary”, so we even tried some really good Chorrizo. By the end of Place #2, I was pretty stuffed, but we Tracy was still hungry so we hit up one more spot on the list.

Place #3 had phenomenal wine! We went to La Casa del Abuelo. I was too full to eat, but Tracy ordered the specialty, shrimp w/garlic butter. Same thing as the first place, but everyone agreed that Place #1 was better. However, the wine was so good at Place #3 (and cheap at 1.90 euro/glass!), I’m definitely going back to pick up a bottle to bring home.

The only downfall I have to say about the food (as yummy as it is), is that Spaniards use entirely too much Olive Oil!! I've never seen so much oil in my life - from eggs, to fries, to paella and shrimp....you name it, there's olive oil on it! I'm gonna have to work out double-overtime just to offset all the heavy food I've been eating!
After almost 3 hours of “tapas-crawling”, we decided we had had enough and headed back to the Metro to go to the hotel. The Metro in Madrid is fairly new and SUPER clean!!! Extremely easy to use and what I consider pretty cheap! Only 1 euro/trip or 6.70 euro for a 10-ride pass. The train itself reminded me of a MUCH cleaner version of the Paris trains. The stations were clean and simple; however not handicap-friendly, and definitely make you climb TONS of stairs! I joked with the girls that no one needs to go to the gym if they just use the Metro a few times a day.
That’s pretty much it for Madrid (for now)…work has been keeping me pretty busy and I’ve also been hitting up the gym almost daily. Getting used to the eating schedule of Spaniards has been a little difficult and will definitely mess me up when I get home.
Lunch doesn’t start until 1 or 2pm and most things are closed from 4-8pm.
Restaurants don’t even open for dinner until 9pm daily and most people usually go to dinner around 10pm. Pretty tough for someone who needs lots of sleep and typically goes to bed around that time!
I’ve also been driving a lot around Spain. We have rental cars for work and since most of my coworkers don’t like to drive (especially in the horrible Madrid traffic), I’ve been taking the wheel every day. Our Controller was nice enough to let me borrow his Tom Tom (GPS), but even so, I’ve gotten lost a few times…not fun in an unfamiliar area and when it’s rush hour traffic!! I’ve definitely had my fair share of Honks to last me a while.

The Plaza Mayor - awesome place for people watching!

As you can tell, the architecture of the buildings is amazing....check out this link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56284&l=f8c7a&id=500066404