Argentina Night, or, My Vacation Was Better Than Yours

Five years ago, three of my girlfriends and I went to Buenos Aires. It was the best trip ever.

It was one of those all too rare vacation experiences where we actually made friends with locals, some of whom we still talk to.

 
We went to one house party where we salsa danced on the balcony overlooking the Buenos Aires skyline until sunrise, then went out for pastries. We had the best looking cab driver anyone’s ever seen. (I told him that he was “demasiado guapo para manejar el taxi.”) We went tango dancing, horse back riding, sun bathing in Uruguay, and, obviously, drank a lot of malbec.

I would be remiss if I did not mention this awesomely bad novel that I made everyone read, not knowing how bad it would be.

 
But The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club just added to our fun because we could see a bar and go “That’s one of the places [the main character] Cassie went! Let’s not go there.”

It was a life changing trip for me. When we reluctantly came back to New York, we decided to reunite monthly for the sole purpose of reliving our trip and pretending we never left. While having become less often than monthly, Argentina Night has survived these last five years. Even through that time that Alice moved to Arkansas (weird).

Last week, we celebrated our five year anniversary at Buenos Aires restaurant in the East Village. For the millionth time, we relived that magical week, drank lots of malbec, and recited Cassie’s stupid toast from the above mentioned book.

“Here’s to the ones we love.
Here’s to the ones who love us.
Here’s to the ones we love who don’t love us.
Hell, screw them all. Here’s to us!”

(Rolling eyes.) So scandalous. “Hell”? “screw”? My virgin ears!

That’s the end of my story. Feel free to tell me about your favorite vacation, or how you’re totally going to do vacation reunions from now on.