4 - Oct 16 - Burgers, Bicycle Carts and a Boat Ride

Wednesday, October 16.  We started out our daily adventures walking around to find somewhere to eat.  We ended up with some tasty burgers from a restaurant called 1516.  We were the ONLY ones there during the lunch hours, which was so awesome!  Marcos became fast friends with Diego (the manager of the restaurant) and they chatted throughout lunch.  Marcos had such a great time, that he ended up going back to the restaurant several times during our trip to watch soccer games on the big screen.  That man LOVES his soccer!  

Marissa and I found a cool tree in the restaurant and looked it up.  Diego told us it was called "níspero."  We looked thait up and found out it is a loquat tree.  Super cool!  We loved finding new plants and animals during our time in Argentina.

We started walking to Rosedal (a big park area with a famous rose garden), but we decided we were a little far from it and ended up grabbing a taxi.  We squeezed in the backseat and Marcos hopped in the front.  Thankfully our taxi driver didn't care - that was NOT what we found throughout most of the trip.  We often ended up needing to take two Ubers to get our clan of 5 anywhere.  

Rosedal was BEAUTIFUL and the weather was PERFECT!  We had such a great time!!  The park reminds me of Liberty Park.  It's HUGE and has paths for bikes and pedestrians without cars.  We rode these fun bicycle pedal carts around the paths.  We all fit on one, but the guy talked us into getting two so we wouldn't be crowded.  We would have been find with one!  We got super close on this trip and learned to do EVERYTHING together.  It was really fun to watch our strengths and weaknesses come into closer view and fall into place to work like a well-oiled machine.  

We also had a ride on paddle boats.  It was AMAZING floating through the water and seeing all the plants and trees surrounding us.  We had a great time.  Caleb was a champ and paddled for a big portion of our ride.  He loved it!  

We headed back to the Airbnb to rest a bit and then set out to find a grocery store.  We knew that eating out for every single meal wasn't a good idea so we needed to find some simple foods to eat from our home base.  The kids were so excited about milk in a bag.  We were definitely a sight to see trying to figure out how to make milk in a bag work with the little plastic jug in the fridge!  We started out by pouring it into the jug.  Marcos later told us we were just supposed to put the bag into the jug.  Who knew?  We made some pasta for dinner and later took a walk through the neighborhood and ended up getting some tasty ice cream from a place called Alfa.  DELICIOUS!  The kid who owns Alfa is 20 years old and makes all the ice cream flavors himself.  Super impressive!  The kids immediately fell in love with dulce de leche ice cream!! 

Marcos was hoping to go to a soccer game while we were in Argentina, but he was unable to find tickets.  He was a little disappointed, but settled for the next best thing.  He and Preston headed out to find a place to watch the Argentina vs Bolivia game on the big screen.  They ended up back at 1516 with their new friend Diego who warmly welcomed them and gave them both free Sprites.  Preston and Marcos both had a great time and Argentina won.  Marcos definitely LOVES his soccer!