14/12/2019 – Travel day, Cordoba to Buenos Aires, Argentina

We got up and had a coffee before showering, packing our things, and saying goodbye to Umma, the amazing cat. There is no Uber in Cordoba for a reason unbeknown to us! Suprising when there are so many young people living here. We flagged down a taxi to the airport. We stopped for gas halfway, which was literally gas, so we had to go and stand by the service station while he filled up. I don’t remember ever having to do that before! We got dropped at the airport in really good time, so we were checked in, luggage dropped and through security with lots of time to spare. The airport gradually filled and overbrimmed with people, it seems like everyone is about to go on their summer break! Apparently summer holidays have just started here and will run right through until March, when we go back to England. We are bracing ourselves for busier streets and attractions, and for everything to get that bit more expensive! There were lots of people wandering around with little baskets with cats or small dogs in, I suppose taking with them for their summer break. We called mum on the airport WiFi and then I worked on the diary, while Josh read his book. We boarded the plane and both listened to podcasts for the flight, which was just over an hour long. We landed in Aeroparque, a small domestic airport very close to the area of Palermo in Buenos Aires, and conveniently also the area we are staying in. We collected our luggage, and Josh bought himself some chicken nuggets, as a bridging snack! There is a really good taxi system at the airport where you type in you destination address onto a touchscreen and fill in details such as number of passengers and bags, it tells you the cost and prints you two receipts. Then you go outside and wait in the very fast moving queue, get in the taxi, and give one of the receipts to the driver who then takes you to the address. Seems like a very efficient and fair system! We got dropped off outside our air bnb, and we got buzzed into our apartment block and went up the old fashioned lift to our flat. We were greeted by Juan, our air bnb host. He is a 26 year old actor, who owns the very mid century 3 bedroom flat. It is very cool, it has beautiful wooden floors, and old furniture which he told us he got when his gran moved out of the city. He welcomed us in, and spoke very good English, he was very easy to talk to. He told us that we are his last air bnb guests as he will move back to his parents house in the South of Argentina (where he is a ski instructor during winter) in order to save money to go travelling and snowboarding in New Zealand for a year. We got settled in to the flat, and quickly left again for some lunch as Josh was beyond hungry. We found some middle eastern food a couple of blocks away, which satisfied our hummus and falafel cravings! There is no hummus in the shops here, middle class crisis! With our bellies happily full we wandered back to our air bnb and had a coffee and relaxed for a bit. At around 18:00 I dragged Josh out of the house again to explore the local area. I was itching to get out, lets just say Josh was not! We walked around Palermo towards plaza inmigrantes de Armenia, as suggested by Juan. There was a market lining the streets, which we wandered around before sitting down on a step in the park. We watched a samba band and some street dancers perform which was very lively! There is something about live music! Next we wandered the bustling streets of Palermo. There were so many young people having drinks outside, live bands on every street corner, it was almost like a festival vibe. Josh was absolutely pooped by this point so we went to the supermarket and bought some groceries and went back to our accommodation. We had toast for dinner and had a chilled and sensible night in.