"Perdon, no hablar español"
(Sorry, I don't speak Spanish) before attempting to speak to anyone, they are much more gracious and slightly more patient. Today I met a lady while losing myself on Defensa (the antique laden street on the way to Plaza Dorrego). Her name was.. Well I've forgotten it already. But she was extremely lovely. Not a word of English, besides the word "beautiful", which she repeated while pointing at me and smiling. I bought 50 pesos worth of antiques (roughly AU$10) and almost didn't want to leave. The building I was in was a 2 story mansion in the 1880s, which had three courtyards on the bottom floor alone, where I met.. Whatever her name is (man, I wish I remembered)! The bottom courtyards are now the home of antique and art stores, although years ago it was to school children who were deaf/mute.
Lollie, I think you and I would be able to spend a whole day here. As a loner, not as long. I so badly want to rave about places with people (in English) and chat about the amazing, the not so amazing and have a knowing response back.
As I write this, I'm sitting on a sunny window ledge of Starbucks in Plaza Dorrego while I pass the hours with attempting a certain logo for my nieces back home. "2 bugs and a rosebud". It's harder than it sounds. I even have a few good ideas! But when you have an image in your head, it's hard to put that onto paper.
I just went and had a look at the street vendors across the road, selling all kinds of interesting things. Spoons turned into mirrors, forks turned into bracelets, coins turned into stencils of famous people.. The list goes on.
There's actually a bit of a (boring) story about these cotton bracelets I bought. If I only bought one thing from every place I'd been in South America, it would be a cotton bracelet. I see all kinds of travellers wearing them, and I want one from each destination. Sounds cool, right? Only that it was impossible for me to buy any! In Quito, I didn't have cash to buy one. On the Galápagos Islands, I searched Isla Isabela only to discover that they don't exist over there. On a different island, I found someone selling them but it was pretty chunky and not really what I was looking for. At Quito airport, I saw them through the window of a shop, but it was 4am and everything was shut. Found someone selling some at Lima airport in Peru, but i didn't have any peru currency. On a walk with the brazilian boys, I saw someone selling them on the side of the road, but they didn't have change from 100 pesos. Yesterday at Plaza Dorrego, I saw a street vendor selling them but when I went up to buy, the lady said "half hour you wait here. Girl come back half hour." Well even half an hour later, she hadn't come back. The lady shrugged when I asked how much. So today I came back and FINALLY got my hands on the bloody cotton bracelets. I chose out 8 different colours (one for each day I was in the Galápagos Islands) but she charged me 5 pesos each and I only had 30 pesos on me. She said I could have 7 for the price of 6, so I put one back.
Starbucks didn't have wifi (what?!) so started to make my way back home..
Overall today wasn't so bad. I got lost on purpose, to try and take my time going back to the hostel. Of course, this meant that I spent more money while stumbling across incredible stores. I have no self control. I tried my hardest to have a budget lunch. I went to the mini supermarket close to home, bought a couple of mini bread rolls, a small wheel of Camembert, 4 slices of jamon (ham) and a small packet of sugar-glazed biccies. I sat myself down in the 2 story mansion and constructed my first sandwich. The Camembert was the strongest cheese I have ever tasted in my life. I desperately felt like wine afterwards but thought that I had better hold out until dinner. I couldn't eat more than half of my breadroll and sacrificed the rest to the bin and had a meringue brownie and dulce de leche frappacino from Starbucks to wash down the taste.
Plans for dinner:
Leave the hostel and get a table for one. Somewhere. Anywhere.
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