La Plata, Argentina – A Batavia reunion

Hello again! So we’re about a week behind on posting our adventures, so this will be short and sweet as we play a little catch-up on our adventures. Prepare for photos! 🙂

Last week, we had the pleasure of a little Batavia reunion, per se, and met up with old friends from my hometown! Danny Schmitt and his wife Juliana Cancelo, fellow Batavia High School peeps. Juli’s family is Argentine, and it just so happened that they were traveling to the Buenos Aires area around the same week we were. SIDE NOTE: Juli recently opened a restaurant downtown Batavia specializing in authentic Argentine empanadas and they are de-LICIOUS! Bocaditos Cafe – If you live in the area, I definitely recommend checking it out.

Myrcella, Sylvia, Gustavo, Juli, Danny, & us (love that Gustavo is wearing a Die Antwoord shirt, OMG)

We had a delightful day walking around with Juli, Danny, and Gustavo (Juli’s dad), our unofficial tour guide. Gustavo grew up in La Plata so he took us on a grand walking tour of most of the notable places. La Plata is where the government and main country operations occur – they would say a good way to think about it is that La Plata is like the Washington DC (in function), while the nearby and much larger Buenos Aires is like the Hollywood.

Mosaic in the exact center of La Plata…over a time capsule!

Museum underneath the cathedral with artifacts from the cathedral’s construction, beautiful art, and a tomb or two.

Took the elevator up one of the spires and had some spectacular views up high!

Museo de La Plata – A natural history museum just filled to the max with reconstructed skeletons, fossils, taxodermy, anthropological artifacts, pinned bugs, fermeldahyde-preserved snakes and oddities, and actual mummies! SO cool. It’s laid out so that your walk-through follows the progression of time, starting with the oldest prehistoric fossils and organisms and making your way down the evolutionary timeline to today. Quite a treat!

These enormous Armadillo-beasties were just fascinating to me.

Republica de Los Ninos – So this is pretty much a miniaturized kids-oriented Disneyworld-type village in the middle of a park and is free. It also has educational purposes for kids to learn about how a city works – they can walk into the “town hall,” various other specific governing buildings, even a little “church” or local “mosque!” Most of them have shops or ice cream/sweet parlors, and there are playgrounds everywhere. A kid’s dream for sure.

After a full, humid day of walking around, unwound with some mate and medialunas. Below is Juli’s Aunt and Uncle’s backyard – beautiful!

Later, we headed over to their family friend’s house for a little “soiree” and met a bunch of incredible Argentine folks. Great food, drinks, conversation, laughs, and vibes all around. Thank you again, Juli and Danny, for including us in your family crew for the night! 😀

We visited 3 breweries downtown La Plata!