New Year

Our first day of this new year was disappointing to say the least.

Feeling fairly rough around the edges, we struggled out of bed at about 2pm and set off to find something to eat, namely Macdonalds. Josh was feeling particularly fragile, and needed food fast. Unfortunately, fate was against us because it was closed! Closed on new years day, we were outraged; this would never happen in London! In fact, it turned out most places were shut for the day, so we kept walking until we came across a little cafe that was open.

I wish we hadn't gone.

We sat down and the waiter took his sweet time bringing us a menu. We ordered some drinks which were brought to us fairly promptly, although Josh ordered his with ice which was apparently too much to ask for. We then ordered our food, milanesa de pollo, and mashed potatoes. For those of you that don't know, milanesa de pollo is a chicken breast bashed til it's really thin, breaded and fried, basically a chicken escalope. It really shouldn't take too long to prepare.

We waited for over 30 minutes for our food. Most of the restaurant were given their lunch before us, even if they had arrived after us. Josh eventually asked the guy where our food was and it became very clear that he hadn't put our order in. It eventually came after about 40 minutes, with no apologies or anything. The damn food was lukewarm! It had clearly been microwaved, and not well. I couldn't finish mine, it would not have tasted good even if it had been hot.

Feeling very disappointed considering it had cost us $20, we headed back to our hostel, and discovered on our way that MacDonalds had opened in the mean time!

This evening, we tried a different place (obviously) and it was yet another let down. Note to travellers: Chinese food in Argentina is gross. Instead of noodles, they had used spaghetti! The meat was disgusting, the spring rolls were actually filled with beef that tasted similar to a Cornish pasty, and everything was so greasy. I don't really like Chinese at the best of times, but this may have put me off for life. The best bit of the meal was the salad!

So we have been thoroughly underwhelmed on this first day of 2013. Our night last night was ok; we watched fireworks over the harbour with some girls from Ireland, Brazil and Germany, then went to meet Josh's Swedish friend and his sister at an outdoor street party. We left pretty early though, and got lost on our walk home too.

All in all, it's been a bit of an anticlimax. We're seeing two friends we made last week tomorrow, who are both from Buenos Aires, so that should be fun. The girl, Martina, took us to a suburb of BA on Sunday called Tigre, which was really pretty. We sat by the river and drank maté, a popular drink in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, kind of like really strong green tea. It was a lovely day, so hopefully tomorrow will be too, and will make up for our crap day today!