First long weekend: Córdoba, Argentina

    Me and seven other friends ventured out of Mendoza this weekend for a four day break. Friday we did not have class at Cuyo because it was an anniversary of the university, and Monday nobody had school because it was a national holiday, Dia del Niño. We left Thursday night on an overnight bus for a 10 hour ride to Córdoba, one of the provinces in between Mendoza and Buenos Aires. We arrived at 8 a.m. ready to explore Nueva Córdoba. Downtown, we followed our map to see all of the important landmarks, mostly churches and statues. We went into a Jusuit crypt that was turned into a museum with artwork. We found some good restaurants throughout the city for meals all weekend, mostly consisting of coffee, empenadas or pizza. We also had to try the ice cream to compare it to Mendoza's, where everyone is so proud of their ice cream.
    While walking around Córdoba, we noticed that all of the names of the streets, parks, and plazas are the same as the names found in Mendoza, except in different locations. We saw all of the common names we have become accustomed to in Mendoza, such as San Martin, General Paz, 9 de Julio, Sarmiento. After learning Mendoza's layout, seeing the same names in different places got really confusing. I've never seen this type of construction in two cities, where all of the names are repeated. They are the named after important places or people in Argentina, so each city must want to use the same names.
    We went to Park Sarmiento for a little in the afternoon, which is very similar to San Martin Park, very close to where I live in Mendoza. We went to three art museums in the park to see some very interesting abstract art and sculptures, but we also saw very disturbing art about the Dirty War in the 70's when there were many child kidnappings and murders done by the military governmentin Argentina.

Casa de Che

    On our second day in Córdoba, half of us went hiking and the other half went to Carloz Paz, a city nearby that had a lot of tourist attractions including many markets and a chairlift above the city. From there we took a tour bus to Alta Gracia, where Che Guevara's house is located, the Argentine Marxist Revolutionary who had a lot of influence in Argentina. From there we stopped at a little village along Lake Molines where many locals were selling wine, salami, and cheese. From the lake we went to Villa de Belgrano, a German settlement that was also pretty touristy, but also had some great beer and chocolate tasting.

Lago Molines

Cu-Cu Clock

   






 



Double fisting beer and ice cream in Villa de Belgrano

    After spending three nights in Cordoba, I'm definitely glad that I chose to study abroad in Mendoza instead of a bigger city like Cordoba or Buenos Aires. There were too many people and it was hard to know where to go to have fun because the city was too big. The hostel we stayed at was trying to promote their friends' bars and boliches, so they didn't give us a real answer for where were the best places to go. We ended up trying a couple bars and boliches near our hostel, but we were all exhausted from traveling anyway that there was no reason to stay out super late. Although it was a much bigger city with a lot more people, we were all confused because so many places were closed during the day and at night while we were there. They have a few peatonal streets (pedestrian streets) like we do in Mendoza, which are normally very crowded with people and restaurants, but the restaurants on the peatonals in Cordoba were all closed. This caused quite a few detours during the weekend as we kept trying to check out restaurants we'd heard about, but then finding them to be closed. So instead of dining out every night, we made two homecooked family dinners in the hostel. One of a vegetable pasta, and the other of gourmet grilled cheese. I haven't had many sandwiches here and I'd been starting to crave a good grilled cheese.

Our colorful hostel

    On our last night, we wanted to see a show in the city. A newspaper we found had a list of shows, and we went through somewhat randomly and picked one near our hostel that was only 40 pesos. It was called Pernocta: hedor de confesiones. This translates literally as Overnight: stinks of confessions, so we thought this might be intriguing. We were not prepared for a very serious and emotional "play" about how hard it is to be a dancer. It only lasted half an hour, which was good because we'd had a lot of wine and couldn't handle the serious nature of the play. This left us needing more wine, so we found some at a kiosk for much cheaper than you can find in the grocery store, and spent Sunday night playing games at the hostel with a new friend we met from Australia.
   The bus ride home Monday morning lasted much longer than on the way there; we made at least 10 stops along the way, watched 3 movies on the bus, and slept for the rest of it, arriving back home just in time to go to bed (after doing my homework for the weekend).