Revacation part 5

2010/03/30

We started out this day in a taxi on our way to the bus station. Due to the city tour I took I was able to recognize a lot of things on our journey. We did have to wait for a while when we got there and our bus wasn't on the screen at first but it did show up and we checked our luggage. Apparently there was an issue with the type of bus we were boarding. We were supposed to have seats that reclined the whole way but this bus had seats that reclined only part way. It was confusing but they gave Ale a bunch of money back because of this so that was cool. Also more seats would fit on this bus due to that so instead of being packed it was quite sparse. It was a double decker bus so we got on the top and went the whole way to the back. They gave us a snack bag and a water too. The seats seemed fine to me. I still don't understand what the issue was but whatever. It was a 5 hour ride to the beach and it took me a while to fall asleep but eventually I did.

We woke up pulling into the station in Mar Del Plata. We claimed our bags and grabbed a taxi to the hotel. It sure was weird and deserted at 6 in the morning. We stayed at the San Remo Grand Hotel and it was pretty nice (PIC). I thought it was real cool that they let us check in that early and go up to our room. I liked that our windows opened because I like that crazy feeling of 'OMG I could totally fall out of this window and die' and I thought hotels didn't even have those anymore (maybe just in the US). We ended up going right back to sleep until a tolerable hour came along.

We woke up and wanted to go get breakfast and go to the beach. I didn't exactly dress up because I thought we planned to go out, get breakfast then come back and get ready for the beach. This didn't matter at first because we went right down the street to the bakery place and got some medialunes for breakfast. I wondered why she ordered so many like 10 or something but once I started eating them I wondered why she didn't get more. lol

It was windy and pretty cold and I had shorts and sandals on. I was not comfortable and wanted to go back to change but Ale said let's just check out the beach real quick. It wasn't far so I said fine. We just had to cross the street and walk behind the casino. I guess due to the weather everyone stayed away because there was no one there. I wanted to snap a few pics real quick but some guy with a professional looking camera tried to get us to let him take some pics. (Did I mention we became masters of snapping our own pics? Someone is smart because now cameras come with a little screen on the front) We were both like No no but he said he'd use our camera so Ale relented. Of course after a few pics he said that we should let him take a few with his fancy camera now. Very slick dude. :| As I said earlier I was not really ready for this. I looked crappy and had my not-nice glasses on but we let him take the pics anyway and then had to follow him back to his shop to get them printed out. I tried to tell Ale we didn't need this but she didn't believe me until he told her how much it was. 100 pesos! I guess they turned out nice though. We got like 10 of them so we split them between us. (PIC)

We went back to the beach and I started complained how cold I was so we left the beach and we went back to the room so I could get more comfortable. We decided to check out the pool at this point. I didn't realize this place even had a pool. I didn't see one. I found out why. It was on the 10th floor! I don't know enough about architecture to know how that much water could be contained that high up but whatever. It wasn't huge but it was a nice pool and I found a nice hot jet of water blasting at the one end so I hung out there. No one else was here so it was nice to relax by ourselves for a bit.

After that we took a little nap and then got dressed at went to Manolo's for dinner and I got more pizza. I got confused by their mirrors. Looking into the back of the place I thought it was huge but there were just so many mirrors it looked like the place was double the size. The whole one wall was a wall of mirrors. There were stairs going up to the bathroom and I was wondering as I walked back which side was the Men's room. As I got closer and realized there was only one because the other was in the mirror I lol-ed at my silliness. Since there were mirrors up where we were sitting as well we took another picture of us in it. At this point we knew taking pictures of ourselves in every mirror of every restaurant we went in was going to be 'the thing' we were going to do.

When we left we went to the pedestrian part of this town and noticed a movie theater. That was one of our plans from our original itinerary - see a movie - so we bought tickets to see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 3D. They gave us a discount coupon for a place called Carltio's that sold gourmet pancakes so we checked out a few things around there and decided to go cash that sucker in. On the way we checked out a bunch of the shops and booths they had set up around here. There was a place where they spelled out the date every day in rocks so we took a picture of that. There was a bum sleeping right next us that we didn't even notice at first. We also stopped at this mall so I could get some wifi to check my iPhone (had to shut the 3G off so I wouldn't get insane international roaming charges).

We got to the pancake place and checked out the menu. This was going to be awesome! Where we sat there wasn't a mirror nearby but we saw there was one there. After we ordered while we waited for our food to be cooked we ran over and got our restaurant mirror pic. All the dishes here were named after famous people from Argentina. I forget who ours was but it was covered in chocolate and stuffed with nuts. Amazing!! (PIC)

By this time we had to walk back to go see the the movie. On the way back we saw a bunch of dogs attack another one. (Did I mention there were stray dogs running all over the place?) I never heard the sound this dog made and I was surprised when we saw what was going on. I don't know if the dog that was being attacked was someone's or not but some guy seriously bolted after the attacking dogs swinging his shirt at them as a weapon. I didn't think that was a good idea but they did run away so lucky for him.

We got to the theater and took our seats. The movie was in English and had Spanish subtitles. We both enjoyed it. You can't really screw up Alice in Wonderland and Tim Burton is a pretty creative guy. I thought it was funny that the theater was extremely militant about the 3D glasses being stolen. They all had security tags in them with scanners through the doors that would beep if you tried to sneak them out. I guess they cost enough they they REALLY didn't want people to steal them. It was late by this time so we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

TO BE CONTINUED