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<\/a><\/p>\nAfterwards, I returned to the room and dozed for another hour or two. Today was a free day in Buenos Aires and neither Meg nor I did much in the way of prepping. We were tempted by the high speed ferry to Uruguay but it was a pricey proposition for a not-necessarily-stellar experience. We decided instead to hit a triumvirate of sights we saw but didn’t necessarily get to appreciate on yesterday’s city tour.<\/p>\n
Navigating by map we only got lost six or seven times so that’s pretty good. And the added mileage in getting lost made me feel slightly less guilty about skipping this morning’s run. Nonetheless it remains my hope to grab an afternoon 5-10k to loosen the stiff muscles before leaving tomorrow for the Ioffe.<\/p>\n
First stop on our triangle of tourism was the Paseo de la Historieta in San Telmo, a street lined with 3-D statues of famous Argentinian cartoon characters.<\/p>\n
There’s no artful way to do this but to bullet point list them; I should say there’s no artful way that I can conceive of at this particular moment. But sometimes bullets are bitten and such is the case here.<\/p>\n
We began our tour with Mafalda, a young girl seeking world peace in the land of adults. She’s sitting on her park bench and now so are Meg and I. I can get behind increasing the peace in this world, thus I sat behind the M-heroines. (Unrelated side note: in high school I was in a Mark Medoff workshop version of Stephanie Hero, a fractured fairy tale fable. There’s a line in the play that has Stephanie asking, “What exactly is the difference between hero and heroine?” Backstage we would always snicker and say to ourselves, “Street value.”)<\/p>\n
Next was the man-about-town playboy Isidoro Ca\u00f1ones. Apparently he was full of verve and vim and was always surrounded by a troop of girls unattainable for any other man in Buenos Aires. So it makes sense that I’d snap a pic of Meg with him.<\/p>\n And then there’s Matias.\u00a0 Welcome Argentina.com describes this chance encounter thusly<\/a>:<\/p>\n Right there, riding his fast skateboard along Balcarce Street, between M\u00e9xico and Venezuela, Mat\u00edas is waiting for us. That naughty, good-humored and witty child was created by Fernando Sendra in 1993 in the comic strip called Yo, Mat\u00edas<\/i>. He has accompanied us ever since with his perplexing questions about the grown-up world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One of our last stops was at Don Fulgencio, a character described by our tour guide yesterday as a man with no childhood. As a result, Don Fulgencio has embraced being a kid in an adult world. I can relate.<\/p>\n But perhaps my favorite stop on our tour was this graffiti sprayed mural.\u00a0 We experimented with our iPhone panorama shooting and I couldn’t stop laughing at our myriad attempts to hold cameras steady and rush about the other to obtain a bizarre tryptic.<\/p>\n And we had to wait for a guy to finish smoking sitting next to this famed bee with no arms.\u00a0 But it was worth it I think:<\/p>\n From there we wandered over to the obelisk or Obelisco de Buenos Aires.\u00a0 Erected in 1936 to commemorate the fourth centenary of the original founding of the city, it’s a dead ringer for the Washington Monument.<\/p>\n Delightfully, it wasn’t too far from a Freddo’s.\u00a0 I know it was you Freddo.\u00a0 You had the dulche de leche ice cream locals said we MUST try.\u00a0 They weren’t wrong — super sweet and delicious, the kiddo size was 50 Argentinian pesos and almost too much to eat… almost.\u00a0 I mean, I pushed through the pain, just as I would in a marathon to get to the finish.\u00a0 That’s just the kind of guy I am.\u00a0 Sometimes we suffer for our victories…<\/p>\n The last triangle stop was the Eva Peron monument.\u00a0 We took a roundabout way to get there (hell, anytime I’m near a map it usually means we’re headed in a roundabout fashion to wherever we’re going), and actually bumped into a few fellow Marathon Tours people.\u00a0 En masse we visited the monument and I snapped a few great “all the women of the world united” pics, both at Eva Peron and at a tulip art installation.<\/p>\n A quick appreciation of a pink pedestrian bridge and we ambled back to the hotel.\u00a0 Meg convinced me to get out and run and rally.\u00a0 Between you, me, and the Internet, I’m super jealous and envious of Meg.\u00a0 While walking back to the hotel, we found out she had gotten into the NYC Marathon. I’m super happy for her, especially since her friend had to defer last year due to injury and now Meg can run with her.\u00a0 And I have a pretty amazing life, no doubt.\u00a0 But I’m still human and I’m jealous a variety of people here in Buenos Aires found out they got in and I, sadly, wasted my $11 once again on the lottery.\u00a0 This may be overcompensating but I am really happy for those folks who do get to experience NYC for the first, second, or even tenth time.\u00a0 They’re very lucky.\u00a0 I’m just jealous.<\/p>\n Meg wanted to do a 5K and then let me do my own thing.\u00a0 I couldn’t get my Garmin to locate its satellites so I was just kinda timing the run, figuring I’d do about an hour.\u00a0 We ran out to the Women’s Bridge, a rotating bridge over the water way that when ships need to pass spins to allow passage (as opposed to a drawbridge, this one rotates).\u00a0 Supposedly when the Women’s Bridge turns, it looks like a Tango dancer.\u00a0 I didn’t see that per se but it is a cool bridge.\u00a0 We were told that from the hotel to the Women’s Bridge was about a 5K so I ran out with Meg and then kept going down the Puerto Marco wharf to a dead end.\u00a0 I finally from there was able to get a satellite signal and ran back the way we’d come.\u00a0 I snapped a few photos along the way, including one I need to send to Meg as a “hey! what’s up?” photo.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n