Buenos Aires Christmas

I write this short post while clutching my stomach and cursing my sunburn, both of which were features of our Christmas Day in Buenos Aires. (A fuller post on BsAs will follow when the headache induced by a monstrous portion of dulce de leche served with my dessert has passed.)

Christmas Day itself was quite different from the experience of a british christmas; although most shops were closed it was still possible to go out for a beer, and later a blow-out meal (as alluded to above - well, it is Christmas). Not that we really noticed til about 4pm, when we broke from a regime of calling family using skype and sunning ourselves by the rooftop pool of the rather swanky hotel we'd booked for the 24th and 25th (hence the sunburn!)



The big deal here seems to be the evening of Christmas Eve, with many restaurants advertising very expensive meals and entertainment, which most will repeat for New Year's Eve. Walking through the streets of San Telmo we saw many families enjoying festive meals together at home and everything seemed pretty peaceful. That is to say, it seemed that way until midnight when suddenly it sounded like World War 3 had started! We went to the roof of the hotel and watched for almost an hour the immense number of fireworks being set off from every direction (and in every direction, for that matter). Actually, replace 'watched' in the last sentence with 'heard' as most of the fireworks had clearly been designed to deliver the most decibels possible per peso!

We supposed that the fireworks and hot weather made up for the lack of christmas crackers and three different kinds of stuffing... (seriously, no irony intended - it's amazing how you miss such things when they're not available!)

Robin