Here's a little tour of our fancy shmancy hotel.
I know you're all jealous of those pillows. And do you like how we pushed those beds together? Classy.
Check out those flower tiles on the wall. Darin had his first experience with a bidet and he thought it was "fresh and cleansing."
The greatest thing about this hotel was the fitness center situation. We specifically chose this hotel because it had a fitness center and I really wanted to be able to work out while we were gone. Work out I did not. Mostly because I was sick the entire time, but also because...
Kind of a depressing room. And I couldn't even get the treadmill to work....soooo there was no working out. Or lap swimming for Darin. Ha!
My favorite favorite part of Asuncion was the food. We had such amazing food while we were down there, and it was so cheap which made me love it even more.
Lido Bar was recommended to us by one of Darin's PhD friends from Paraguay. They gave us some amazing recommendations and this was easily my favorite, and the only place we ate at twice. We went there for lunch Monday morning after Darin went to his first interview. I had been planning to tag along, but decided I needed more sleep in the end.
Their Ham & Cheese Empanadas were divine.
The Milanesa (basically chicken fried steak) was huge and delicious. They made fresh juice for us right in front of us. Oh so good. Looking at these pictures is making me hungry...
We went to Lido Bar not only because of the recommendation we received, but also because it was across the street from the Panteon de Heroes, which is a very old, beautiful building that contains the remains of some of Paraguay's great heroes. We were so sad to see that it was under construction and that we couldn't go in!
That put a slight cramp in our plans for the day, so we just ended up wandering around the plaza next to the building. Tuesday was a holiday and there were already a lot of festivities going on, one being all these little shops set up around the entire plaza.
Mate cups for days.
Engraving names in mate cups.
After walking around the plaza we went back to the hotel and took it easy the rest of the evening, as in, Darin worked on a paper that was the due the next day and I tried to edit.
The next day, Tuesday, was a holiday so Darin was not able to set up any interviews. They were celebrating the foundation of Asuncion. In the morning, while we were in the hotel--Darin trying to get that paper done--we heard music from outside and ran down to see this parade going by. That was really cool.
We later left to walk around and see all the celebrations. We visited this church, took some super touristy pictures of these helmet looking phone booths that were everywhere, and ate (more) empanadas from El Bolsi.
Later that evening our friends came by and grabbed us again to show us more of the city. Have I mentioned they are the best? We told them they didn't need to spend their holiday showing us around but they kept saying they wanted to...we owe them big.
They first took us to Cerro Lambare (Lambare Hill). It is a famous hill there that overlooks the city and has some statues of famous Paraguayans, including this statue of Chief Lambare, leader of a Guarani tribe.
They later tried to take us to actually go inside of Palacio de los Lopez--government building--but it is currently closed due to a protest going on. There was an entire block close to the building full of farmers that live out in the country that have parked themselves there with little tarp coverings as a shelter demanding that their debt be written off, or something of that nature, not sure if I fully understood that conversation, actually, I'm sure I didn't. So that was a second bummer for us having something be closed that we had hoped to see.
We were, however, able to go into the little museum across from it and got another nice view of the building from there.
We were there when they turned on the spiffy lights. And can we just talk about all the phone wires for a second? They are crazy down there!
Afterwards they took us to one of their big malls. After my experience working in poorer areas of Argentina, it was so interesting to see more of the wealthy lifestyle in Paraguay. The mall was so big. It had a supermarket inside it, as well as a HUGE inflatable slide that went from the second floor down to the first. We stopped at a little orchestra performance outside of the mall for a few minutes--there were performances all over the city in celebration for the holiday.
After the mall, around 8:00 p.m. they took us to a churrasqueria (steakhouse) where we met up with some of their family to celebrate. We were so surprised when we got there because the restaurant was empty. Darin and I both wondered if the place was very good since there were so few people there. We were just ignorant. Dinner really doesn't get going until 9 or 10 p.m. down there. Our friends just ate early because they know that's what we do and 8 was the earliest we could go and still have meat be ready. So thoughtful. Needless to say, the place was hopping by the time we left.
I apparently didn't take any pictures. Probably because I was so focused on socializing with our friend's family without looking like a fool. (Why is small talk in a second language so hard? Probably easier than the government talk Darin was trying to have with Alia's brother). I was also stuffing my face with all the meat I could. Pictures were the last thing on my mind. It was buffet style, so we could just walk over to the grill and ask to try all the different cuts of meat we wanted, which we most definitely did.
It ended up being a very nice holiday for us. Loved spending it with out sweet friends who showed us how it's done.
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