la playa!

Last weekend I took a vacation from my very busy schedule (ha.) here in Buenos Aires and went to the beach! Mar del Plata is a city with the infrastructure for a few million people, but roughly 600,000 permanent residents. It looked like a big city, and it was, but it had more of the small beach-town feel. We could tell we had entered a different life when we encountered chatty waiters, friendly taxi-drivers, and easy access to monedas.

The cashier at the supermarket gave me my change of $5.70 in monedas - a large feat in Buenos Aires, although I suppose in the U.S. I'd be pretty annoyed with over 5 dollars in change. The woman at the kiosco didn't understand what was happening when I gave her a weird amount of money to prevent her from having to give me a moneda, something a kiosco employee in Buenos Aires would beg for from a customer. It's quite amazing how there's no coin shortage when the buses allow you to pay with bills, or buy a pass in advance - no me digas!



But we spent the weekend relaxing on the beach, roaming through the city, eating the largest chocolate and nut covered ice cream with dough of sorts inside (I tried to convince the cute Italian lady to bring the invention to NY), exploring the nightlife, and taking full advantage of the amazing breakfast provided at the hostel (okay, more than full advantage, since we stole breakfast the first day upon our early arrival).

I'm surprised I didn't turn into a medialuna dulce (23829483 times better than a croissant) after the amount I ate.