BA goes bad without Whitney

Saturday, March 28 & Sunday, March 29

We woke up on Saturday morning and Whitney was gone. We sadly faced the day and decided another three hour walk was just what we needed. We walked to the neighborhood called La Boca which is where the famous soccer team La Boca Juniors has their stadium and also is where the famous street Caminito is located. Caminito is the street that you see in all the pictures of Buenos Aires that has the super colorful houses. It's funny that this is the picture that everyone has in their mind of Buenos Aires, because it's literally a tiny street in the middle of a not-so-nice neighborhood that is now just a tourist trap. It was fun to see it, but I thought it would be a bigger area, literally there were only about seven houses on the street. There did happen to be a craft fair happening in the neighborhood because it was Saturday and tons of people tango-ing in the street, so it was worth the walk.

By the time we got back it was late and we were tired so we went next door to a pizza place for dinner. The pizza was delicious and reminiscent of Chicago-style deep dish so we were pleasantly surprised.

Sunday morning came with high expectations of the San Telmo antique fair that happens every Sunday. We walked over to the neighborhood and the street was covered with people selling crafts, clothes and handmade things. Naturally, I was in heaven and Matt was closer to being in hell. It was super hot, super crowded and packed with chaos. We made our way to the square where the actual antiques were and walked around a bit. Literally there were so many booths with so many antiques and so many people around it felt like being at TJ Maxx on the day after Thanksgiving having to dig through all the racks to find a gem. Needless to say, we didn't last long there but I enjoyed it anyhow.

When we got back to the hostel we encountered a mess. We had dropped all of our laundry off to be done on Saturday around noon. The guy told Matt it would be ready in 24 hours. When we got bacck to the hostel on Sunday after the fair, it was about 3:00 pm and still no sign of laundry. A bit worried since we had an early flight the next morning we asked when we could expect it to be done. The guy looks at us like we are total idiots and says "tomorrow." Well sir, that's actually going to be a problem becuase we are leaving at 5:00 am tomorrow. The guy we dropped it off with said it would be done in 24 hours and did not tell us that Sunday doesn't count in those 24 hours as the launderers do not work on Sunday. This wouldn't be a huge problem in real life becuase in real life we have more than five pairs of underwear and three pairs of pants. When we do laundry here, we do all of our laundry and all of our warm weather clothes were in it. So they confer in Spanish for awhile and then someone goes into the back and brings out the bag of dirty launday we gave them more than 24 hours ago. I guess in hindsight it was better that they just forgot about sending it out becuase we actually got it back, but annoying none-the-less.

That morning our lightbulb had burnt out and so we had asked the guy to change it before we left for the fair. So we go upstairs, dirty laundry in hand, only to see that indeed our lightbulb had been changed and the old lightbulb had nearly made it into the garbage can...only it didn't. So shards of lightbulb glass were all over the floor and all over the remaining clothes I had that were not currently in the dirty clothes bag. I went downstairs and explain what happened and she tells me they will send someone up to sweep. No apology, nothing. I calmly go back upstairs and start picking shards of glass out of all of my clothes, my backpack, everything I own. But now, the Italian in me is getting ticked. I literally have only the clothes I am wearing unless I want to wear disgustingly dirty clothes or clothes covered in small pieces of glass.

So I tell Matt I am going to go down and speak to them about what they can do to make it up to me. I go and tell them I am frustrated because we have spent eight nights at their hostel and given them a fair amount of pesos and not only do I have a sack full of dirty laundry but free glass shards to boot. They say it was an accident, that could have happened to anyone and it wasn't their fault the laundry didn't go out. I counter that it was their fault that the laundry didn't go out and also their fault they didn't tell us that Sunday doesn't count as a laundry day. I also explain that I don't care so much about the laundry and would have dealt with that but now there are little glass shards everywhere. I also explain that when a lightbulb hits the floor it's a little hard to "not notice it" and I thought it was bad housekeeping practice to break a lightbulb on the floor and then just leave it there.

They argued with me, told me they couldn't do anything for me, called the manager (who of course was unreachable) and it came to a wait out. Matt came down to help at that point which was good because I was so fed up I had to walk away. (Dad is proud right now, no aggression ensued, only assertation.)

To make an already long story end, they finally agreed to pay for our cab to the airport the next morning and I was too annoyed to argue further so they will see a bad review on hostels.com courtsey of me. Boo-ya.

After all of the hostel fiascos we headed to Palermo for a last dinner, which does in fact bring us to a happier post from Matt featuring the steak of a lifetime.