The One With the Mar del Plata New Year's Vacation

Normally,
I'd write a story to explain the events that happened, but on this occasion,
I'll let pictures do the talking and narrate ever so slightly.

So we left for Mar del Plata early on Wednesday December 31st morning. This is me walking from apartment to train stop to get train to go to bus station to get bus to go Mar del Plata. Then, I turned around, because I forgot the bus tickets.

This is the book I've been reading for MONTHS now. On my final pages, actually. I find it VERY different from the movie, but just as fun. I tried reading it on our way back to Buenos Aires, but I got car sickness all the way back.

I was the only one that had ONE bag - a knapsack. So I didn't have to "check in" any luggage.

Btw, can I just say, the bus system in Buenos Aires is chaotic. Our bus tickets said that the bus is due to depart at 9:45am from platforms . . . and here they gave us like 10 different platforms for us to choose.
So, we arrived at 9:40am at the platforms, and seems like our bus wasn't there. We asked around and NO ONE knew which bus was going to Mar del Plata. At this point we thought for sure we had missed the bus.
Then, at 9:50am, the bus finally pulled into a platform. Sheesh!
We boarded and 5 minutes later, we were off.
FYI: the ride was around 4-5 hours, despite them saying it was 6 hours.

We checked into our hotel and quickly went out to find a place to eat. This was it. Food was fast-food but kind of nice. As usual, I was famished, but with not much of an appetite. Oh, and we shared this food:
Although, I did not share the anchovy looking thing, the rest of the seafood platter was delicious.

Our hotel was called Dora. It had a 4-star rating.
I wonder in what Universe they got that 4-star rating? It was not even worth 3. This is me looking out from our breakfast venue on the 7th floor of the hotel, trying to see if the day was going to be cold or not.

FYI: For a beach city, it was always cold. The sun was there, but so was the chilly winds. Made for no fun.

Even on vacation, I'm on call.

This is a milkshake of some sort. It's called licuado. It's with milk and banana. My favorite. And look at the size!
Everyone knows I like them big.

This orange juice was so delicious coz it was so naturally pulped.

This building caught me by surprise. It was inffluenced by Arabic design and architecture, coz there were Arabic wordings all over it, and the lunar moon thing on the top made me think it is a mosque.

Another thing that caught us by suprise was the abundance of these so called "Pakistan Shops". They were all over the place, selling things from "hindu clothes" to sheeshas to Egyptian souveniors to Chinese souveniors. It was just too weird.

We had lunch at this nice restaurant.
We wanted to go there again for dinner, but it was too far a walk.

Me goofing off after our loooooong walk along the beach fronts.

Oh, my lordy! I looked so skinny in this picture. That's what happen when you get sick for 3 weeks plus and don't eat at all.
But I loved it!
The looking skinnier, not the sickness part.

And finally, a scene from our final dinner and night at Mar del Plata. This is me getting some air outside the restaurant we had dinner at.

Overall, the trip was an experience. The beaches were mainly filled with ghetto people. Not many good looking people around. That was a major bummer! The days were cold. There wasn't really much to do. Casinos were everywhere. Couldn't find a good seafood restaurant. In the end, didn't have that nice seafood salad we were aiming for. Oh, and I got sick on New Year's Eve after we finished our weird buffet dinner at the weird buffet restaurant. So, I dampened the celebrations some.

Would I go again to Mar del Plata? I think not.