A recap of our journey up through this last day of April.

Our journey out of familiar and comfortable surroundings really began in the first week of February (3 months ago) when we began moving out of our house on Buttercup Lane of over 10 years, and all that the kids have known their entire lives (except for Hawaii; which can become familiar and comfortable real quick). It was a brutal move for many reasons I won't address here. But since we made it through we figured we were pros so we'd keep at it. We moved out of Buttercup on March 6th, stayed with parents until we left for Argentina on March 9th, and since then we've:

Lived in an apartment in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires for one week.

...in downtown Cordoba for almost a week.

....in a hotel in Cafayate for a week

.....in our house at La Estancia de Cafayate, which Erika refers to in the previous post, for almost 3 weeks.

...... and currently in our apartment in the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires that I refer to in a post from last week. We've been here for 11 days now.

Throw in about 5 nights in different hotels for less than 18 hours, and that about sums it up. But don't feel sorry for us, it's much easier than you can imagine when you have three young and energetic kids to help you through it all.

Anyway, we've had some really nice times, and some really tough times, but the whole thing has been a great learning experience that will serve us well in the future in many ways, no matter how things end up. And speaking of "ending up" we've booked our last apartment (hopefully) where we'll be staying for our longest stint, and the rest of our time here in Argentina, for the next 5 weeks. Wow, 5 weeks in one place is sounding REALLY nice right now! 

We've actually spent the better part of the last week searching for an apartment through local agents, Craigslist, Airbnb, and other avenues. We visited one all together last Saturday that we had high hopes for (mainly because of it's stunning views of the city from the 24th floor), but in the end decided that it was going to be just a little too small for us (and the double bed in the Master Bedroom didn't help much either; although it would probably be better than the two singles that we have here). I've seen a few other places on my own (it's pretty difficult to mobilize the whole family to go see a place), and have gotten to know BA pretty well from driving and taxiing around to different areas. I even got a great walk in the other day in a quest for suitable parks for Alessandra (she can be a little picky at times). I came to the conclusion that the best parks were the ones around our first apartment, which is where our new apartment is located. The area is called Alto Palermo, and it really is about as central of a location as you can get (in a nice area; our current location is very central, but it's in more of an industrial part of town) in Buenos Aires.

Back to my walk for a second though; as I was walking Gianluca around the block this afternoon trying to get him to fall asleep, I was thinking about my walk from a couple of days ago. I was trying to draw parallels between my trip that day in Buenos Aires to areas of San Francisco so I'd be able to put things in context for most of you that have been following this blog ( yes, all three of you). Anyway, the geographic similarities were pretty amazing: We're currently in Villa Crespo, which is in a central part of the city, very similar to let's say a part of the Mission district. From here I took a taxi to a neighborhood on the border of La Boca and San Telmo, which would be very similar to Hunters Point/ Potrero Hill, and about the same distance in a cab if you took it from an area of the Mission a bit closer to the center of SF. And from there I walked through the downtown area (a few blocks in from the water; as I may in SF) around a bend to the neighborhood  of Palermo, which would be very similar to the Marina district. Yes, the walk was about that far too; I think I was walking for about two hours. From there I took a cab to go check out another place, which was in a more residential part of BA, called Belgrano, which would be similar to the Richmond district. And then I finished my search with a ride back to our apartment in Villa Crespo. When I have more time I'm going to plot my BA loop out and see how close it is to my imaginary SF loop. Just looking at the two images below you can see how similar the walk from La Boca to Palermo is to a similar route one would take in SF from Potrero Hill to the Marina.

I'm curious to see how I do with the last part of our stay. I AM NOT A CITY BOY. The longest stay I've ever had in a big city has probably been the last eleven days, and so far- NOT SO GOOD. Well, the circumstances haven't been the best (with the issues with our current apartment and such) so I'll wait and base my judgement of city life on the next five weeks. 

As you can probably tell from Erika's previous post; she can probably adapt to country life a lot easier than I think I'll be able to do with city life. Especially if we can keep the spiders away from her. But we'll wait and see. The kids can be pretty happy anywhere, but something tells me Alessandra is leaning towards being a city girl. We took her to Manhattan when she was about two, and she absolutely loved it. She seems pretty happy here too.

This is the center of Buenos Aires. See the Obelisk in the background.

...and Teatro Colon behind the fountain.