Our Buenos Aires Vacation 2018: Day 1 - Visiting Chinatown

If anyone were to ask me which Argentine province makes the perfect vacation spot, I’d say Buenos Aires without hesitation! The Argentine capital is by far my favorite. We’ve visited here twice in 2013, once in 2016, and 2018 makes it our fourth visit.

The last time we traveled from our host province of Cordoba to B.A., we were a bit disappointed with ElPractico, the bus company we used. But it’s a new year and we decided to give them another shot. 

They provided us with a nice, comfy blanket

Major brownie points! The seats had USB ports that allowed us to charge our phones.

This time we booked two round-trip tickets with comfortable bed seats. In 2016, we opted for the semi-bed seats. The only obvious differences between these two features are that one seat reclines a lot more than the other, but the food they serve you with the bed-seat package is better.

You certainly get more to eat, along with whisky and a hot drink afterwards. We were happy because the tickets only set us back $3,800 pesos total ($194.33 USD), which isn’t really that bad at all.

I also decided to give the Mundial Hotel another chance too. The last time I stayed here, there were a lot of things I didn’t like about the place, particularly the lack of cleanliness. This time things were different. The walls, the bed, and the restroom looked a lot cleaner. The carpets were reasonably clean, but that’s okay because we brought our flip-flops.  We only stayed for two days and were charged $1,593.53 Argentine pesos ($81.50). 

So here’s the thing! If you’re looking for a 5 star quality hotel, you’re not going to get that at Mundial Hotel, but if you want to travel on a budget, then I do recommend this hotel. It’s certainly a lot better than getting bed bugs and who knows what else at a hostel. At the very least, the staff is warm and friendly. 

Unfortunately, we arrived at 6 in the morning at Retiro, where the bus terminal is located, and we couldn’t check in, but the hotel was kind enough to allow us to leave our luggage while we went sightseeing. Our first destination was Magic Donuts!

It’s located in Ayacucho 860 in la CABA and as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, they’re the closest thing you’ll find to a Dunkin Donuts here in Argentina.

Their glazed donuts are amazing, but they also have a variety of other flavors like lemon, cinnamon, and decorative donuts with Bavarian cream stuffed inside them.

We decided that we were going to have breakfast here for the next three days, and that’s exactly what we did. 

But this was still our first day, so afterwards, we took the subway to the Palermo Shopping Center, where they have a KFC and a Wendy’s.

Buenos Aires is currently the only Argentine province that actually has these two restaurants. Every other province just gets Burger King, McDonald's, and Subway. 

After pigging out at KFC, we ran into the KEL Bookstore inside the Alto Palermo Shopping Center, which only sells books in English. We found the store by accident. It's on the ground floor of the mall, but it's at the very end of a hallway, and you can literally miss it if you don't know where to look.

There were young adult novels, fiction, non-fiction, recipe books, travel books, children's books, calendars, you name it! All in English! We were like two kids at Disney World. The books are a bit expensive if all you have are Argentine pesos. Most books we found ranged anywhere from 330 (which is about $15 USD) Argentine pesos to 600 plus Argentine pesos ($30 USD), but it's worth it!

This is what we ended up getting.

Our biggest regret was that we couldn't buy more. Fortunately, we were told that we could order online. So, if you're an expat or a local living in Argentina and are interested in buying books in English, you can order them at www.kelediciones.com. They'll charge you about 150 Argentine pesos, but at least you won't have to worry about issues with customs like some people have had when ordering loads of books through Amazon.

After we left the bookstore we decided to walk off our KFC meal by doing some more sightseeing. We also stopped by the Ateneo bookstore, which tends to attract tourists because it’s essentially a vast multi-level opera house with books. 

What can I say? I have a thing for chefs?

Then we headed to the hotel to check-in. After taking a shower and putting on some fresh clothes, we went to visit Chinatown, which they call “Barrio Chino” here.

These performers kept us entertained for a couple of stops.

Who Photobombed Who?

Everything in the stores costs a lot less than the stuff you’d find in regular Argie stores in the area, which is exactly what we loved about this place.

They also had supermarkets and restaurants throughout the area, and of course, everything had a Chinese theme.  

The one thing that really bugged us was the fact that some of the locals were making fun of the way that the Chinese people were talking. I mean, seriously, why visit Chinatown if you’re going to be a jerk?

Anyway, I decided to brush off how some people were behaving and grabbed some food. We had some spring rolls, which I haven’t had since I moved to Argentina. There are Asian places in Cordoba that offer egg rolls, but they’re basically empanadas in the form of an egg roll. Besides, spring rolls are supposed to have pure veggies inside and that’s what I was craving. 

We also had these fried balls, which were slightly reminiscent of a hush puppy, which I also haven’t seen in Argentina. But I didn’t want to eat too much because my stomach was still acting up after my health scare from a few weeks ago.

While Zach did some shopping in Chinatown, I was busy listening to this guy play "Dust in the Wind" with his violin.

Before heading back to the hotel, we decided to look for a Walmart. We assumed that the Walmarts in Buenos Aires would have more international food items than the Walmarts in Cordoba, which quickly did away with most international foods by 2018 and now offer virtually 99.9% local food items only.

Unfortunately, the B.A. Walmart we went to was a bust! The only thing I found was a Peach flavored Fuze Tea, which is the closest thing you can get to Lipton Ice Tea here in Argentina.

At this point, both our feet were hurting, and we had to walk quite a bit to find the nearest subway. By the time we made it back to our hotel room, my dogs were barking so badly that Zach told me to stay in bed while he went to buy us some Ugi’s Pizza, which tastes a lot more like the pizza back in the States than the usual stuff we find in Cordoba. As usual, Ugi’s did not disappoint!

I'm not having a stroke. I'm just really tired!

For the following day we planned to go to Puerto Madero. It wouldn’t be the first time we visited here, but there was something I wanted to do that I hadn’t done before and it required a trip back  through time.

To be continued…