200 Years of Porteños

I'm a few days behind on writing this post, and in life in general since getting back from the US, but it deserves a mention that Argentina celebrated it's bicentennial birthday on Tuesday, May 25 - also known as the day I flew in. A little piece of history, May 25 is not the day that Argentina won it's independence like we celebrate in the States, it is the day that they started the revolution against Spain that eventually (a little over 6 years later...) lead to the full independence from Spain on July 9, 1816. Thus the main streets in Buenos Aires named 9 de Julio and 25 de Mayo which were the places to celebrate on Tuesday.

Happy Birthday Argentina

When we got home from the airport, and after I cleaned the 20 hour old funk off of me, there was a crazy loud noise coming from Ave del Libertador. So we head to the front windows of our apartment to see some sort of race car parade. Because, of course, nothing says Happy Birthday to your country like a race car parade. People were lined up on both sides of the street - scaring the daylights out of me. This was a huge parade, at least 40 cars long. Each of the cars stopped, were surrounded by crowds of people, then shooed everyone out of the way as they peeled out (out of control as well, I might add). Lucky for everyone, no cars went totally out of control and all of the bystanders went home in one piece. From what we hear, the parade was not the highlight of the celebration, even though it was pretty cool. The big, anxiously awaited event was the grand re-opening of the Teatro Colon, which has been closed for a few years now undergoing renovations. I had all but given up hope for the theater to open while we live here, considering that two different tour books I have announcing the theater's opening in 2008 and 2009, respectively, so it's good (albeit surprising) news that we'll be able to see the inside of that theater. So, Happy Birthday Argentina, I hope it was a good one.