Very short trip w/ friends!

After planning this trip for two whole weeks… it finally left the group chat and became real!! We took advantage of the fact that one of our friends was starting their vacation from work and another friend had the weekend off, so we could finally go to the capital and spend the weekend there.

We left on Saturday at 5 PM and arrived there at 7:35 PM. The trip felt longer than expected, but it was honestly a lot of fun. We drank a ridiculous amount of mate and sang our hearts out the entire way. But… we did run into a problem. We had “reserved” a hostel for that same night, where check-in was supposed to be at 8 PM. The first red flag was that they sent us a message saying that our check-in for the next day was ready (which, in hindsight, should have been our first sign that the stay was not going to be great). Luckily, we managed to solve it by showing them screenshots of our reservation being for that same night, so the plan continued as expected. The real problem started when we arrived at the place and it looked NOTHING like the pictures. The building seemed tiny, and from the outside we could already see that the walls were covered in humidity and that the plaster was literally falling apart.

We spent around 15 minutes debating whether we should even go inside or not, until we finally decided to leave and find another hostel. Thankfully, we hadn’t paid any deposit beforehand, so we didn’t lose any money. After discussing our options for a while, we found another hostel nearby. It was slightly more expensive, but we decided that paying a little extra to sleep somewhere decent was probably better than staying in whatever that first place was supposed to be (not to mention the alleged bed bugs/fleas situation…). 

The new place was beautiful. It had a really cozy bar downstairs and an inner patio where people could have barbecues. The rooms were pretty simple, but you could tell they were clean, and the hallways were filled with gorgeous paintings. We chose that specific weekend because we had the Argentina VS Jordan match, so while we waited for the game to start, we walked around the city for a bit. The people from the bar prepared a big table for us, and meanwhile the place started filling up with people: locals and foreigners alike, all with their own expectations (and predictions) for the match. I have never experienced such intense heart palpitations in my entire life. I could literally feel my heartbeat hitting against my ribs like my heart was trying to escape my chest. Still, it was incredibly fun. We celebrated, ate, and drank together with everyone there.

When the match ended, the night was far from over. We went to another friend’s house (someone who lives in the capital), where their group and ours got together to celebrate the victory. We stayed there until 5:30 AM on Sunday. After that, we walked around the city center, cheering with the people celebrating in the main square, and eventually went back to the hostel. We talked for a while about the night and about the absolutely miserable expression of the woman who had to open the garage for us so we could park the car. Somehow, it became 7 AM before we realized it, so we agreed to sleep until 9; exactly enough time to have breakfast before check-out at 10 AM.

(Absolute madness.)

After leaving, and having the most bland breakfast in human history, we decided to walk around the city some more while waiting until lunchtime. We wandered through some parks and plazas while drinking the most watered-down mate we had ever made, until eventually we got tired and decided to lie down and “photosynthesize" on a little hill in one of the parks. We stayed there for about 15 minutes. It probably could have been longer, but we knew that if we remained completely still for much longer, we would fall asleep and waste the rest of the day. With a few complaints, we got up and headed toward a fast-food place one of the girls wanted to try. Plot twist (but not really): salads from fast-food restaurants are awful.

After lunch, we decided to keep exploring. We went to the fine arts museum, where I took some of the worst pictures known to humanity. I’ll upload the ones that are more “presentable” once I finish cropping them all into squares. The museum had four floors full of beautiful stories, especially the works of Remo Bianchedi, who had to go into exile in Germany after being persecuted by the military government during the dictatorship. Four floors filled with artworks showing completely different lives: exiles, immigrants, disappeared people. It was all incredibly moving.

After that, we went to a shopping mall that had an arcade floor on the top level, plus a half-floor with bowling lanes and pool tables. In the end, we chose the arcade because the bowling lanes were occupied and none of us wanted to wait. We loaded points onto a card and started playing. Everything was ridiculously overstimulating: the flashing lights from the machines, the people walking around like zombies, the lack of windows that made it impossible to know whether it was day or night… I guess this is what being in Las Vegas feels like? It was great fun. After wasting all our points on games that didn’t even give us prizes or tickets, we made one last attempt at a claw machine and managed to get… a little duck!! We named him Quackity, and we love him with our entire souls.

Since we still had money but no more points, we decided to try the recently installed F1 simulator.

Let me tell you: I had never sweated so much in my life.

Maybe it was because the heating was on, maybe it was the fake adrenaline the game gave us, but after three different races we were completely EXHAUSTED. If that’s what a simulator feels like, I don’t even want to imagine what it must feel like to be an actual professional racer… may God have mercy on them. 

Once our luck ran out, we went to an escape room themed after the series Money Heist. This was the most humiliating experience of our lives. We spent FORTY MINUTES in the first room. I don’t know what happened to our brains, but we simply could not get past that part. With the last 20 minutes, we basically did a speed-run and managed to reach the fourth room, but unfortunately, time ran out before we could finish. Still, it was incredibly fun. We laughed, we managed to “steal” 1,900 euros and three gold bars, and we left completely amazed by the experience. We promised ourselves we would come back and that next time we would escape without needing any hints and in time.

The day ended with a nice snack, freezing outside the café we chose because there wasn’t enough space inside for five people. We looked like zombies. The two hours of sleep we had gotten were starting to show; we tried to keep talking, but we were no longer functioning properly. After paying, we got back into the car, made a quick bathroom stop, and started the trip back home. I don’t remember much of the way back because I fell asleep almost immediately after leaving the capital.