We got to Pearson International and checked in right ahead of a bigwig at Manulife who promptly invited us out to dinner the night before the conference starts - free dinner? Oh yeah. We got our bags checked in and our seats slightly re-arranged and headed to the Air Canada Lounge to spend the next hour waiting for our flight.
I've been SO good for the last 63 days (who's counting) on My Fitness Pal and have lost 14 lbs. So I'm REALLY trying to be good this trip so I don't undo a third of what I've accomplished in the last 2 months during the next 8 days - so I had a half a glass of wine in the lounge (I mean its free I can't have NONE) and no snacks while Jay had an after dinner and before airplane food snack. I also didn't quite pass up the offer of sparkling wine when we got aboard the plane, but I DID decline to have a beef tenderloin dinner with a starter of cheese and salad and a dessert at MIDNIGHT! Jay is angry at me because I told him I wouldn't order my cheese and salad so that he could have double cheese and salad - its MIDNIGHT. I said "I'll order it at 3am, and then it counts for tomorrow - its tomorrow's cheese for me!" (I slept through 3am and didn't have to test that theory) Instead I sipped my sparkling wine and turned on my seat massager - I mean seriously!
Just before the dinner service started I went to bed...meaning folded (powered) my seat down to flat, covered myself with my down blanket and laid my head on my pillow after putting on my airplane socks (again, thank you Manulife). I was so tired all day today. I woke up at 5:45am worrying about getting my work done before having to leave today and helping Lori, the designer assigned to the house, get ready for the Christmas Home Tour which the house is on this year - a lot going on when I have a flight to pack for and the kids schedules to arrange while I'm away.
I managed to sleep until about 7:30am before I had to get up to pee. Also, I could smell the pancakes cooking, which was our breakfast option - even though I decided that at home I don't have pancakes for breakfast so I would decline those as well..I wasn't sure I would have the willpower to actually say the words "No, Thank You" when they came around to take the order. Anyway, this is the point at which I learned that Donald Trump had won the election - standing in line to use the airplane lavatory - kinda fitting - no one can believe it. Its unbelievable - and to skip ahead a bit to later today - no one in Argentina can believe it either! We have had 3 conversations with Argentine people today and all 3 brought the election results up. Back to the pancakes, turns out I didn't have to test my willpower, they brought the breakfast basics (a mini croissant, strawberry yogurt and fruit salad) and then when the flight attendant got to me she offered me the omelette, which I had no problem saying no to, so I didn't have to make the decision! Yay for me.
When we arrived in Santiago, Chile we had to de-plane and wait in the lounge until the plane was ready to board again, Jay read news about the election while I played Candy Crush and texted and emailed various people about work and the kids schedules.
When we re-boarded, in our original seats, we settled in for a quick 90 minute flight to Buenos Aires. When we landed we were met by a Manulife representative (Veronica) and taken to our car to be dropped off at our B&B where we will be staying for the next 2 nights. The conference itself is at the Four Seasons, but its $540USD per night (No thank you Manulife) so we opted to stay at a cool boutique hotel near there that my Mom had found online called The 5th Floor. On the way to our hotel our rep was really great about answering all of my questions about Argentina and how life is here. Education is free right through University, a 1 bedroom condo costs about $140,000 USD, the average income is approximately $13,000 USD per year for an entry level position, health care is free but her mother in law if she wants to see her cardiologist would have to go to the Drs office the day she wants to see him at 5:30am and stand in line to get one of the 30 appointments available for that day - OR you could pay approx $150USD per month (more than 10% of your salary) for an upgraded health plan that gave you better access than the free plan, gas is $1.50 per litre, but cell phone plans are $50/mth for 5GB of data and unlimited calling and texting, there are 40 million people in Argentina and 14 million of those live in Buenos Aires and the surrounding area, which is about 200sqkm - so its very dense, and God can be found everywhere, but those who live in Buenos Aires believe his Head Office is located here (I like that one). I can't remember it all, but those were some facts that stuck out to me.
We got dropped off to the hotel and met Veronica #2, the owner, and her husband Miles, an ex-pat from London, UK who have owned the B&B for 4 years. There are 7 rooms on two floors of an apartment building (5th and 6th) in the Palermo neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. We chatted with her and had a glass of wine and a beer on the terrace with Veronica and Miles, got a dinner recommendation and some ideas for what to do tomorrow and then went to the room to relax before dinner. Veronica and Miles spent a year renovating the apartment before converting it to a boutique hotel or B&B. Its all very cool in styling and they kept a lot of the original features. I'll come back and add a few photos because its really quite cool.
We walked to dinner, a little over a km, to a restaurant recommended by Veronica #2 and we arrived at 8pm and were the only people there. I had asked Veronica #1 about what time people ate in Buenos Aires, knowing that in Italy it was quite late, and she said if they were eating dinner at home they would eat around 9pm but if they were going to a restaurant they wouldn't go out until 9:30 or 10pm. Dinner was amazing. Jay and I shared a bottle of a Malbec, Cab Franc and some other Argentinian grape blend that the server had recommended and then we shared 4 appetizers (a burrata salad with a tomato compote that had coriander seeds and cumin in it, a pumpkin soup, meatballs served with asparagus and a poached egg over mashed potatoes and a lamb filled roasted red pepper - all of them were amazing) then I had a bite of Jay's sticky toffee pudding and goat milk helado (ice cream)..so good. We walked back to the hotel where I had a quick shower and we FaceTimed the girls, now Jay is sleeping and I'm just finishing up the blog for the day...on to tomorrow - Good Night!
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