Saturday 27th April 2013 - Once we had got a little way into Argentina last night I must of nodded off pretty quickly. I woke up at about 7am to remember I've been travelling right through the night. I was straight away fascinated to see whereabouts we were so I checked my phone to see we were still an hour or so away from Rosario a city of around 800,000 population. Before we got to the city centre and picked a few people up they gave us breakfast which was basically just cake but it was enjoyed. They played a chick flick film and it was actually in English so I got drawn into that, I was hoping it be more of a Rom com but hey, ha. Then we watched home alone in Spanish. I was trying to learn "merry Christmas you filthy animal" in Spanish but no joy yet. The city district must be enormous because I felt like we were almost there for ages just going on how urban the area was. We arrived a lot earlier than the scheduled 6pm but a 40 peso taxi journey and an early check in we're all very straight forward. We were tired despite sitting down the past 20 hours so it was easy for the receptionist to show us the private bathroom with a balcony and for us to pay the extra £2 each per night to upgrade. We spent a while enjoying the luxury of a chandelier lit bedroom with a wooden posted bed and balcony. We both took long showers and I facetimed my parents and Jake who let me watch the Liverpool game via his phone. I managed to see 4 out of liverpools 6 goals against Newcastle! I went up to the 6th floor and purchased a bottle of wine for us to drink in our room whilst we got ready for a night out in the Paris of South America! The night life is suppose to be outstanding here, we caught a taxi to La Cabrera taking in the sights as we went a long. The rain was hammering it down at this point and the traffic was bad but we didn't mind pulling faces in the back of the car and taking photos. When we arrived as expected this famous steakhouse was fully booked but we didn't mind we went to a cocktail bar close by to down some spirits and a couple of beers and eventually they came and collected a and showed us to our table. We met a couple from Minnesota who were really friendly and sat next to us called Paula and Robinson. They gave us their card to meet up with them in Bogota as they had guest houses there. I unfortunately lost this card as by the end of the night I was really drunk and have no idea what i did with it, which is pretty annoying really as we could of done with somewhere cheap to stay when we get up that north and some friendly faces would of been nice, but spilt milk etc. Whilst saying our goodbyes to the couple our food came out. We had ordered the lomo steak which came out with lots of different flavour dips and sides and 4 very juicy tender looking steaks. The meat was gorgeous. I just wish there was a bit more. The meal seemed to vanish probably because how good it was. I mean it was pretty amazing but possibly what I'd expect for £45 in England at a posh restaurant or whatever. We continued drinking Malbec from the bottle until we were both pretty drunk and then from nowhere the heavens opened. We were sat outside and literally the rain was monsoonal. It splattered the ground so hard that we were getting some pretty serious splash back. The road turned into a fast flowing stream so we moved to the table one closer to the building. Once we had talked the night away we thought we should stumble for a taxi not realising quite how drunk we were. When looking back at it I remember thinking wow nicki is drunk after a few slurred words but then it must have caught up with me because I began to understand her blurred sentences more and more. We got the taxi home and loved coming back to our chandelier lit room. Goodnight Buenos Aires.

Sunday 28th April 2013 - uh oh another hangover day. We seriously do not get up well on a hangover on this trip. We, however, did manage breakfast. A little old lady asked us if we wanted eggs and she proceeded to cook us scrambled egg which was nice. During this we filled up on cereal and croissants and then I used her scramble egg to make a killer sandwich. To nicki's horror, the morning she most needs orange juice, and they make you self squeeze it. There's a huge basket of enormous oranges ready for you to cut in half and crush through a mixer to squeeze the juice into a cup. It was taking about 2-3 oranges to fill up a big cup and we needed a few of these to reduce the intensity of the hangover. Once we were filled up we crawled back to our rooms and without either of us agreeing it was our plan we both fell asleep again till well after noon. I had a number of walks that my app had told me about but the rain delayed them yesterday, but now they were looking unachievable again. But we managed to get up to take on the day around 1pm. We walked up to the congress building which is the famous image of buenos aires quite often. We saw lots of people living in cardboard houses, literally massive cardboard houses in front of this big building. Whilst walking back towards our hostel and past again the sun came out as we noticed a big tourist attraction was opposite our hostel. The Palacio Barolo. It's a massive building split into 3 sections to symbolise the different types of comedy that exist, built by an Italian it used to be the tallest in South America. I began to realise that this really is a cosmopolitan city and in fact the street we are staying on reminds me a lot of a European street. Even though ironically it is named Mayo after the month Argentina became independent from the Spanish. We carried on and stopped in one of BA's most famous cafes after crossing Av de Julio, supposedly the widest street in the world. This was cafe Tortoni, and is visited by many famous people for its coffee and snacks and is really old looking inside with wooden beams and varnished wood everywhere, it was actually build in the 1850's even before the Mayo street was famous hence it's change of entrance afterwards. We were disappointed by Peru tube station we thought it had be resigned to its original look but couldn't see it ourself but apparently this was the first tube line in South America. We moved on to a huge square with a number of incredible buildings and monuments surrounding it. First up was cabildo which we almost got in for free at after playing dumb, this was the old government building during colonial times. In the middle was the piramide de mayo which has a pretty sad history, about how the children of the city were kidnapped to be militarised or brainwashed/propagandised and if not killed during the dictatorship. This monument represents the mothers who stood in protest against this happening, the white scarves on the floor symbolise the scarves the woman wore like their babies nappys or bed linen. Something strange was that it was illegal to stand in large groups as it was seen as being a yob. So the woman stood in small groups of 14 so as to not break the law. Weird! Near here was the massive cathedral which we decided not to go in and then the casa rosada which is most famous to us for the balcony Madonna sang don't cry for me Argentina from. But it was where Eva Peron and her husband the president gave speeches for the Peron movement. Lots of really interesting history here and we read about how the president had to go into hiding and obviously the sad young death of Eva in her earlier 30's. As we had already walked in this direction we decided to carry on towards the Puerto Madero area this was the old industry area on the canal but like most places in big cities had been done up with nice restaurants, here we stopped for an italian pizza to share whilst looking out over the expensive boats. From here we walked north heading towards a shopping district, we eventually reached the Galerias Pacifico it's basically a glamorous bull ring. It used to be a link from here to Valparaiso, a place were visiting in Chile, hence Pacific. From here we walked up the calle Florida which is a stretch of pedestrianised street with shops and street performers but we were looking for the monuments and buildings at the end of this street. First up was the x tallest building in the world 'made out of concrete' the Edificio kavanagh which was accidentally discovered by us on route to the Torre monumental or Torre de le ingleses "tower of English" we were looking for this because we gave it the Argentinians to celebrate the 100 years of the revolution and apparently they call it their Big Ben. This is also a short walk from the Malvinas aka falkland island memorial for the men they lost in the war against us. We spent a short amount of time walking around the plaza San Martin and saw the headquarters for the ministry of foreign relations, a cool, more modern building was built to purposely reflect the other building in its window which was a nice touch. We were feeling really hungover at this point so we decided to get a taxi home to save us as we had walked forever. We will have to do recoleta tomorrow!

Monday 29th April 2013 - Today we were determined to get done what we didn't fit in already - recoleta parks. It meant a walk towards the same areas we had covered but we were feeling more refreshed today. We thanked fanny (the lady who cooks the eggs) and left. Some of the districts we walked past when getting closer to Recoleta began getting really posh and we could tell by the clothes the people were wearing as well. Me and nicki were so deep in conversation that we managed to miss the entrance to the recoleta cemetery and somehow walked an entire block around it until we returned back to the correct side. We found a Starbucks and nicki stopped for a coffee to top up from the decent walk, I was given a free drink which obviously was great even after first refusing one accidentally. We initially walked into a large church to take some photos and it was quite interesting to see in here what the area looked like a few hundred years ago with this building not changing. Once we realised they wanted payment to go any further we opted for the free cemetery next door. A snobby woman tried to charge us but we knew it was free and that was only for the map, but who needs a map around a cemetery!? Well.. This things huge. After taking some pictures I went to admit defeat and buy a map from her but just as I was paying I saw the route we were looking for and told her I no longer needed the map. She was confused but I held nicki's hand and guided her to the allusive Eva Perons grave. You would think it would be obvious with all the crowds but its so narrow that we may have been there for hours if I didn't catch a glimpse at whereabouts it was. It's not a glamorous grave and she is buried with her whole family, rather than her husband, the president. But, it is enough to give you time to think about this pretty impressive woman. We continued to the large parks that surround such as plaza francia and near was the enormous but closed museo nacional de bellas arte. For some reason they close everything on Mondays our receptionist said because they get tired from the weekend haha. There's a few really impressive monuments around this area including one that looks out over all the parks, the monumento a bartolomé mitre and then obviously another Eva Peron monument near the cool robot looking library! We napped in the sun on the grass in front of Eva Peron taking daft photos before attempting a mission walk to the tango building. Unfortunately out app on our phones failed us and after another 2 mile walk there was no joy in finding it even after asking locals. It was all going pear shaped when nicki got a fly in her eye and the locals around were trying to save her with me to get this fly out of her eye. We did our very best to walk back to the hostel going through some fairly dodgy looking areas after admitting defeat when the address took us to a bookies. But with 6 blocks to spare we got a taxi, I know we're weak, but seriously we have walked so far today. When we got home we had a small breather and decided to go out for our dinner, we failed again on our app pulling a blank on a recommended cheap restaurant called chan chans but I wouldn't change it as the place we found on our own was incredibly cheap and was lovely steak! We shared some wine and got a couple of invites to go to a la bomba dance but we had read some reviews that put us off as it wasn't entirely up our street maybe we just weren't in the mood after so much wine and steak ha.