TWO blogposts within the span of a week? You know what that means…either we have another trip coming up soon and I need to crank out my backlog of travel blogs, or I’m on the beach (at work – for the non-consultants this means I’m not actively staffed on a project). Sadly even I’m not crazy enough to plan a huge trip for when I’m 8 months pregnant, so this time it’s the latter. A few weekends ago I went to Santa Fe for a bachelorette and that wiped me out, so I am definitely staying put until baby gets here!

These days most things wipe me out…I was reading my previous blog post about my pregnancy / postpartum with S, and I cannot believe how easy it was compared to this one. This one’s not terrible compared to a lot of women’s experiences – my feet aren’t swelling, I’m not throwing up for 34 weeks straight, etc. – but I still just consistently feel a little bit hungover and get tired quickly. The long list of things to do that we had when we moved in is quickly getting manageable, so it feels like we’ve settled in our new lives for the most part (two big pending things include finishing up a reno project of adding a powder room to our first floor and buying a SUV though… not to mention I have not remotely prepared or organized for the arrival of Baby #2). We have reliable and consistent childcare, and have just come to terms with spending a good chunk of our paychecks on making our lives easier these next few years while we have young kids (i.e., outsourcing as much as possible. Our nanny even unloads the dishwasher and does our laundry for us! She’s definitely getting a giant raise when I go back to work from maternity leave. Now if we could get off the waitlist for part-time daycare, because I still think S misses all the social interaction and structured time that daycare provides).

We have a frequent rotation of friends who visit us in the burbs, both from NY and from out of town. We’re only a short Metro-North ride into Grand Central, but these days it really tires me out to do the commute, especially on weekends with a toddler! But there are so many things to do in Westchester / the Bronx that we have no shortage of activities to keep us occupied. I just need to make some local mom friends while I’m on mat leave so that I still get my social interaction. Too bad everyone around here is at least a decade older if they’re a parent…but I’m usually mistaken for being in my mid-to-late-thirties anyway so I suppose I’ll continue to not use moisturizer and try to blend in as I make parent friends 🙂 Very much looking forward to not being pregnant anymore and being able to do basic human things (let us pray that my postpartum recovery is as relatively smooth as it was with S!)

And now without further ado….enjoy a quick recap and cute pictures from our time in Buenos Aires!

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Streets and parks of Buenos Aires

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved Buenos Aires. M tends to be more of the city person, while I tend to gravitate towards more active / hiking vacations (although we both like both). It turns out that Buenos Aires is so kid-friendly with so much to do! We stayed in the Palermo neighborhood which was leafy and tree-lined with so many shops and grocery stores everywhere, and was generally very central to other main attractions in the city. We especially loved all the amazing playgrounds in the area – truly almost every other country is more family-friendly than the US…

Bosque del Palermo: Eco Park. Japanese Garden, and Rose Garden

We spent a lot of time exploring Bosque del Palermo, similar to Central Park of NYC. We especially loved the Garden of the Poets, the Rose Garden, the Botanical Garden, and the “Zoo”/Eco Park (all free). It was too hot to rent a paddle boat, so we mostly wandered around and let S wander around. We also visited the Japanese Garden one day and the nearby Latin American Museum of Art.

Malba, more Bosque del Palermo: Garden of the Poets, Botanical Garden, driving around in cabs without a car seat…

Another section of the city that we spent a lot of time in was the area around the Cementerio de la Recoleta (the famous cemetery). The cemetery itself was beautiful, but I personally loved exploring all the different grassy plazas named after famous Latin American politicians and activists. We also visited the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (free admission) and had a lovely tea/lunch at Cafe La Biela. M was very excited that Jorge Luis Borges’ statues were inside….#nerd. We also visited El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a beautiful bookstore inside an old palatial theater… #doublenerds.

The Cemetery, bookstore, tea, and plazas

One night we got a babysitter and were able to go out and have a nice Argentinean BBQ dinner and watch a tango show! We waited in line at one of the famous steak places but ended up not getting a seat before our show…but after our show we went to a local steak / BBQ place which ended up being so much better. It’s always nice being able to do something “adult” while on vacation with toddlers – harder in foreign countries to find local babysitters, but we’ve managed in both Argentina and Mexico City. A partner I worked with suggested getting an au pair as the kids get older so that we can bring them with us while we travel and we get built-in-childcare that way – something to consider for the future since our nanny prefers not to travel.

Tango and Argentinean steak date night and our rooftop pool

The latter half of our time in Buenos Aires was when I started getting tired both from the heat and from doing so much all the time – thankfully we had a beautiful rooftop pool to enjoy when we wanted to chill a bit with S. We had grand plans of ushering in the New Year on the rooftop….but I fell asleep many hours before midnight. Sigh.

Day trip to the Delta Tigre

One of the days we did a mini-day trip to the Delta Tigre. We had to get used to just holding S in our laps when we took cabs or Ubers since we didn’t rent a car and therefore couldn’t lug around a car seat all the time. Thankfully drivers weren’t too crazy and we were even able to make the 45 minute drive to the Tigre River with no incident. We mostly walked around the area since we didn’t want to take a 2 hour boat ride with S – but it was beautiful, shady, and a lovely respite from the “craziness” of the city.

After our day trip, we rested for a bit before embarking on the final leg of our trip: Uruguay! Buenos Aires definitely lived up to the “Paris of the South” moniker locals were touting – we found the city extremely expat-friendly. Too bad the economy fluctuates so badly, otherwise it would be on our shortlist for a future vacation condo…