Saturday 3/21 and Sunday 3/22
Lollapolooza time
We woke at about 10 and left at about 11:15 to get some food and take our time heading to the Lollapolooza venue, which was pretty far north of the city. Like Plano to downtown Dallas (ish). The plan was to take the subway, find food on the walk from the subway stop to the train station, then walk from the train stop to the venue. We weren’t sure exactly how far or how long any of these steps would take, but we were fine getting to the venue as early or late as this resulted in.
We ended up stopping at a restaurant called Bar-something at about 11:45. Most of everything else was closed, but this placed appeared to be open, and the lady at the bar (who was handwriting copies of the lunch menu to be inserted in each normal dinner menu) confirmed that they were “abierto”. We sat ourselves and decided to order the grilled chicken, but even though we were literally the only customers in the building, we had to flag down the waitress (same lady) to order. Gabi and I agreed that we both love South America but the restaurant service is one thing we are both excited to return home to.
Both of us were pretty hungry as it had now been 15+ hours since the fuguzetta, but our grilled chicken seemed to take forever. Another food option probably would have been more ideal in hindsight given our situation, but there was no turning back now. Finally the food came, it was good, we asked for sauces, we finished eating, paid, and left for the train station.
As we were in line to buy our 3 peso train ticket, we met some other Americans headed to Lola and became friends. These two girls were studying abroad in BA and ended up running into some other classmates on the train, so it was nice to enjoy a 30ish minute train ride sharing Argentinean experiences with other USAers.
Turns out the venue (the Hippodromo, where horse racing takes place I believe), was a 3 minute walk from the train station, but we had to wait in a long line before entering. Gabi bought a VIP ticket, so he had to go retrieve his ticket (I already had mine) and enter at a different location, but we set a place and time to meet up inside, we had no means of communication once separated. I also found it different that all I had/needed to enter was a little generic stadium entrance ticket. I didn’t need a wristband, receipt, ID, confirmation number, or anything else. Not what I was used to with ACL back in Austin where you have to register your band ahead of time, and take a bunch of other steps pre-event.
I waited in the male line, while the girls seemed to skip the entire female line, and once I finally got to the front, one of the police officers viciously checked my backpack and body. They wouldn’t allow the snacks I bought beforehand and they wouldn’t even allow my gum. The guy almost took my ibuprofen also. This was shocking to me because Argentina was such a laid back country (it seemed to me) and a lot of rules seemed to be broken on the reg during every day life. But if you try to bring gum to a music festival, no sir.
I entered the gates, the girls had waited for me patiently, and we proceeded to get our cheap paper wristbands and maps before walking the additional 15 minutes to the actual hippodromo. It was a great venue with 4 stages and a ton of space for concessions, port-a-potties, seating areas, and other activities. Gabi and I met a bunch of other Americans studying abroad and kind of eased our way into their group. We had a little home base by the VIP entrance between the two main stages and would come back to meet there after seeing whatever artist we wanted. We saw Ed Motta, part of Molotov, The Kooks, Foster the People, Robert Plant, Jack White, and Calvin Harris. There was a ton of people, probably more than 50 thousand, and it was a complete blast. It was a bit dusty, so my allergies were acting up, but I couldn’t complain.
Another thing we found super interesting is that we were very strict on alcohol sales. You could only buy beer (they didn’t offer liquor) from the Beer Garden and you had to show your ID to enter that small-er area. They also tried to limit you to 2 beers for the day by crossing out a number on your wristband upon purchase. And beer sales ended at 8pm while Calvin Harris ended at 12:30am. So basically, after triple MRI-ing each backpack upon entry and confiscating all food/drink they wanted everyone to be sober. Super interesting to me because if anywhere is a good place to enjoy a few beverages, it’s a music festival, and the people that enjoy music festivals are usually those that like consuming.
For dinner, we chose the food truck named “El Tejano” (The Texan), that advertised real Texas BBQ and had a mini Texas flag hanging. I couldn’t not eat there. We got “asado” sandwiches, which were basically pulled beef, pickles, onions, and a splash of BBQ sauce on bread. It really wasn’t bad, a little taste (so punny) of home.
After Calvin Harries, Gabi and I matched with 2 girls that also needed to get back to Central Buenos Aires, so we left together and luckily found a cab rather quickly. The cab seemed expensive, but in the end, we paid 110 pesos each to get home (about 9 USD), which is very cheap in comparison to an Uber/Lyft/cab home from a music festival in the states.
Sunday – We got a little later start knowing how quick and easy it was to get to the venue and decided not to eat at a restaurant before. I grabbed a quick sandwich at the train station, and we were on the train by 1:15. We wanted to see Fitz and the Tantrums’ set at 2:15. This time I gave my backpack to Gabi because they hardly checked him the previous day, so that I could save some time during entry. In the line, I ran into a new friend named Rand, a fellow traveler from Texas, the Houston area. We obviously had an immediate bond. Entry was more thorough today as the officer over-frisked me and even checked every individual pocket of my wallet. Apparently I look suspect.
The Fitz and the Tantrums set was fantastic. I had seen them at ACL previously, but this time they had a rather small crowd as it was their first time in South America, and they were having a complete blast on stage. It was hard not to have a blast with them, especially the co-lead singing black woman who has maybe more energy than anyone I have ever seen ever. Buenas ondas. Then we saw Big Gigantic (who was a lot of fun as well), where we found the same study abroad group as the day before. We enjoyed Alt-J, Bastille (whose version of No Scrubs was great), Damien Marley, a little of the Smashing Pumpkins, and Pharrell. After Pharrell was Skrillex, but we decided we didn’t need anymore base drops and tried to catch a cab or bus early. At this point we were a group of 7, so a cab would have been tougher. So we found the bus stop and waited in line. We weren’t sure what to do though because we didn’t know how long the bus would be, if it would be full, if we wanted to spend the money to pile 7 in a cab, etc. I stayed out of it and just hung out on the grass enjoying the time. A bus ended up coming, but it was over-full. So we called a cab. But, low and behold another, fully empty bus came soon after and we hopped on. It worked out perfectly. Gabi and I got off near central BA and took a short cab back to the apartment. Very successful, fun, and memorable Lollapolooza experience.
Lollapolooza time
We woke at about 10 and left at about 11:15 to get some food and take our time heading to the Lollapolooza venue, which was pretty far north of the city. Like Plano to downtown Dallas (ish). The plan was to take the subway, find food on the walk from the subway stop to the train station, then walk from the train stop to the venue. We weren’t sure exactly how far or how long any of these steps would take, but we were fine getting to the venue as early or late as this resulted in.
We ended up stopping at a restaurant called Bar-something at about 11:45. Most of everything else was closed, but this placed appeared to be open, and the lady at the bar (who was handwriting copies of the lunch menu to be inserted in each normal dinner menu) confirmed that they were “abierto”. We sat ourselves and decided to order the grilled chicken, but even though we were literally the only customers in the building, we had to flag down the waitress (same lady) to order. Gabi and I agreed that we both love South America but the restaurant service is one thing we are both excited to return home to.
Both of us were pretty hungry as it had now been 15+ hours since the fuguzetta, but our grilled chicken seemed to take forever. Another food option probably would have been more ideal in hindsight given our situation, but there was no turning back now. Finally the food came, it was good, we asked for sauces, we finished eating, paid, and left for the train station.
As we were in line to buy our 3 peso train ticket, we met some other Americans headed to Lola and became friends. These two girls were studying abroad in BA and ended up running into some other classmates on the train, so it was nice to enjoy a 30ish minute train ride sharing Argentinean experiences with other USAers.
Turns out the venue (the Hippodromo, where horse racing takes place I believe), was a 3 minute walk from the train station, but we had to wait in a long line before entering. Gabi bought a VIP ticket, so he had to go retrieve his ticket (I already had mine) and enter at a different location, but we set a place and time to meet up inside, we had no means of communication once separated. I also found it different that all I had/needed to enter was a little generic stadium entrance ticket. I didn’t need a wristband, receipt, ID, confirmation number, or anything else. Not what I was used to with ACL back in Austin where you have to register your band ahead of time, and take a bunch of other steps pre-event.
I waited in the male line, while the girls seemed to skip the entire female line, and once I finally got to the front, one of the police officers viciously checked my backpack and body. They wouldn’t allow the snacks I bought beforehand and they wouldn’t even allow my gum. The guy almost took my ibuprofen also. This was shocking to me because Argentina was such a laid back country (it seemed to me) and a lot of rules seemed to be broken on the reg during every day life. But if you try to bring gum to a music festival, no sir.
I entered the gates, the girls had waited for me patiently, and we proceeded to get our cheap paper wristbands and maps before walking the additional 15 minutes to the actual hippodromo. It was a great venue with 4 stages and a ton of space for concessions, port-a-potties, seating areas, and other activities. Gabi and I met a bunch of other Americans studying abroad and kind of eased our way into their group. We had a little home base by the VIP entrance between the two main stages and would come back to meet there after seeing whatever artist we wanted. We saw Ed Motta, part of Molotov, The Kooks, Foster the People, Robert Plant, Jack White, and Calvin Harris. There was a ton of people, probably more than 50 thousand, and it was a complete blast. It was a bit dusty, so my allergies were acting up, but I couldn’t complain.
Another thing we found super interesting is that we were very strict on alcohol sales. You could only buy beer (they didn’t offer liquor) from the Beer Garden and you had to show your ID to enter that small-er area. They also tried to limit you to 2 beers for the day by crossing out a number on your wristband upon purchase. And beer sales ended at 8pm while Calvin Harris ended at 12:30am. So basically, after triple MRI-ing each backpack upon entry and confiscating all food/drink they wanted everyone to be sober. Super interesting to me because if anywhere is a good place to enjoy a few beverages, it’s a music festival, and the people that enjoy music festivals are usually those that like consuming.
For dinner, we chose the food truck named “El Tejano” (The Texan), that advertised real Texas BBQ and had a mini Texas flag hanging. I couldn’t not eat there. We got “asado” sandwiches, which were basically pulled beef, pickles, onions, and a splash of BBQ sauce on bread. It really wasn’t bad, a little taste (so punny) of home.
After Calvin Harries, Gabi and I matched with 2 girls that also needed to get back to Central Buenos Aires, so we left together and luckily found a cab rather quickly. The cab seemed expensive, but in the end, we paid 110 pesos each to get home (about 9 USD), which is very cheap in comparison to an Uber/Lyft/cab home from a music festival in the states.
Sunday – We got a little later start knowing how quick and easy it was to get to the venue and decided not to eat at a restaurant before. I grabbed a quick sandwich at the train station, and we were on the train by 1:15. We wanted to see Fitz and the Tantrums’ set at 2:15. This time I gave my backpack to Gabi because they hardly checked him the previous day, so that I could save some time during entry. In the line, I ran into a new friend named Rand, a fellow traveler from Texas, the Houston area. We obviously had an immediate bond. Entry was more thorough today as the officer over-frisked me and even checked every individual pocket of my wallet. Apparently I look suspect.
The Fitz and the Tantrums set was fantastic. I had seen them at ACL previously, but this time they had a rather small crowd as it was their first time in South America, and they were having a complete blast on stage. It was hard not to have a blast with them, especially the co-lead singing black woman who has maybe more energy than anyone I have ever seen ever. Buenas ondas. Then we saw Big Gigantic (who was a lot of fun as well), where we found the same study abroad group as the day before. We enjoyed Alt-J, Bastille (whose version of No Scrubs was great), Damien Marley, a little of the Smashing Pumpkins, and Pharrell. After Pharrell was Skrillex, but we decided we didn’t need anymore base drops and tried to catch a cab or bus early. At this point we were a group of 7, so a cab would have been tougher. So we found the bus stop and waited in line. We weren’t sure what to do though because we didn’t know how long the bus would be, if it would be full, if we wanted to spend the money to pile 7 in a cab, etc. I stayed out of it and just hung out on the grass enjoying the time. A bus ended up coming, but it was over-full. So we called a cab. But, low and behold another, fully empty bus came soon after and we hopped on. It worked out perfectly. Gabi and I got off near central BA and took a short cab back to the apartment. Very successful, fun, and memorable Lollapolooza experience.