Travelin' Baby

Saturday morning, we woke up, shuttled Emmeline off to a pediatrician's appointment, (which was a nightmare. Awful.) then finally got onto 95 to drive to JFK. Yes, we were flying out of JFK the day after Christmas, which meant we had to drive a fair distance to make it in time for our 10:30 departure. After a painful amount of rain and traffic, we arrived at JFK at 8:30, were hustled to the check in counter, and checked into our flight to beautiful Buenos Aires! This is a picture of what my poor girl looked like by the time we got her strapped into her seat on the plane:

Pretty painful, as was the flight. An 11 hour flight in which Em refused to stay in her car seat. So glad we paid for a seat for her on an international flight. Not like that was expensive or anything. Anyway, she slept some, as did Shawn, Merissa and I. We arrived in Argentina on Sunday morning, and were immediately greeted by how baby crazy the portenos are. We were allowed to skip the line at customs since we had a little baby with us. Strangers piched her cheeks, and told us in spanglish how beautiful she was. Asked how old she was, and what her name is. Luckily, I speak Spanish 101, (nothing higher) so I was able to answer their questions for the most part. Emmeline was a superstar down there - she waved, smiled, flirted and blew kisses to most of the strangers.

We were renting an apartment, so we took a cab (no car seat) from Ezeiza Aeropuerto to Recoleta, the neighborhood we would call home for the next week. The apartment was gorgeous, three bedroom, four bath. Wild. Lucky for us, the woman we were renting from spoke English fluently. She told us there was a grocery store around the corner, so we loaded Em into the backpack and hopped over there. We found that instead of a ten items or under line, they had a pregnant/with child ten years or under line! Awesome! We didn't actually see it until we were done, but I think this proves the extent to which the portenos are baby obsessed. Emmeline wasn't a huge fan of the canned peas and jamon y queso raviolis we gave her for lunch.

I won't do a blow by blow of the whole trip, but here are some highlights:

1) Visiting the Buenos Aires Zoo, and seeing indigenous South American animals

2) Numerous taxi rides with generally cranky cabbies who are 10 times as scary as any NYC cabbie

3) Visiting the Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada (famous for many speeches from its balcony by such Argentines as Evita and Diego Maradona)

4) Eating our first alfajores...I don't know how these glorious confections aren't popular here. They are ridiculous - who can resist what is essentially a dulce de leche sandwich cookie coated in chocolate?

5) Riding the "fast ferry" to Uruguay in first class, where we got to ride a bus to a farm where we were the only four people who didn't belong on the farm. They fed us "beautiful" pork, flan, and homemade dulce de leche, along with 7 tons of other homemade food...and showed us their Guinness Book of World Record collections of pencils and keychains. I am not making this up. Swear to you. I also rode a horse. There is photographic evidence.

6) Emmeline taking many naps in our backpack, and also on padded benches at any cafe we could find.