Cordoba

Cordoba is the second largest city in Argentina.  I realized that it's quite likely that you don't know where most of these places are, so I'm gonna start putting links to locations in my posts.  If that gets annoying, say so and I'll stop doing it.

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Argentines know about Hannah Montana.  I'm not a city guy.  Sometimes Argentine spaghetti sauce is brown. Smoking and jogging go together like a fried egg and a hamburger.

So I arrived from Posadas after a 17 or so hour bus ride in a non-reclining chair next to a large argentine woman into the bus station in Cordoba.  Upon descending from the bus, I realized I had done little to no research about the city and more importantly, where to stay.  I had a vague idea of where a hostel might be and after about half an hour of walking around in circles, I found Che Salguero.  Great hostel.  The guys were cool and the place was nice.  Second favorite hostel so far, probably, behind the one in Posadas.

After dropping off my bags and doing a quick internet check of the area, I walked towards the main area and came across the Iglesia Catedral.

From Cordoba

It was pretty impressive, but since I don't particularly enjoy going into buildings where pedophilia is cool, I decided not to pay the entrance fee and just admired the architecture from the outside.  There was also the Manzana Jesuitica nearby, which is a UNESCO world heritage site.  Which is just a block of Jesuit buildings and also had pretty sweet architecture.  Unfortunately, it's surrounded by narrow crowded streets and there weren't too many places to take a good picture.  It's a common theme in Cordoba.  Beautiful architecture, but hard to find a place to capture the beauty.  They describe it as a mix of new and old in guidebooks and it's really very accurate.

Inside the Manzana Jesuitica, there seemed to be a fully functional university.  Which was a little confusing, since I thought this place was supposed to be preserved for tourists to walk around and take pictures of.  One awesome side effect of this was a sweet tile periodic table.

From Cordoba

After rambling about more around the city, I returned to the hostel.  Sitting there, I overheard a conversation between an argentine guy and an american girl.  They were switching between Spanish and English so I understood most of it.  But then when the conversation hit a lull, he said, "Hannah Montana".  The conversation was then taken over by where she was from, etc.  And throughout the rest of my time in Cordoba, Hannah Montana was a subject of conversation.  This is what people know of about America.  Could be worse.

Anyways, I decided to make dinner.  I bought some sausage (chorizo), some spaghetti sauce which I translated to be with garlic and onions and some spaghetti.  Upon opening, the sauce was brown and very salty.  Combined with the chorizo, it was most likely the worst spaghetti ever made.  But it was food, so I ate it.

The next day, I bought a bus ticket to Mendoza, then walked around the city more.  I got a little lost, sat down in a park and realized I had no more interest in seeing big cities.  Or at least not for a while.  While I was sitting on the bench, a jogger stopped, stretched, pulled out a pack of smokes, lit up, took a few puffs and continued running.  Argentina.

There's also another pic of a cool building on my camera, as well as others from Mendoza, where I currently am.  When I get around to downloading those pics, I'll put 'em on the appropriate site and update you on Mendoza.