Salta

Two weeks ago we had some time off from school and took a relaxing break from the hustle and bustle of city life to visit the town of Salta. We took an overnight bus there and were welcomed by a sunny, warm day. After dropping our things off at our hostel, we explored the town. One of the first things we did was ride a cable car up a hill to enjoy the view. The town did seem to sprawl a bit  from our vantage point but we were able to walk everywhere we needed to go so it felt a bit smaller (and a map of the city fit on a large-ish piece of paper, whereas I have an 180 booklet of BsAs broken up into 42 mini maps as well as a list of all the colectivos, subway lines, and train lines that criss cross the city, quite useful, but it makes you appreciate how big BsAs is). Salta also had the tiny streets that only fit 1 or 2 lanes of traffic at the maximum with parked cars,  there was only a little bit of traffic during 'rush hours' so Salta definitely had the feel of a smaller town.

 Stained glass at the cable car station. Bottom of the hill.

 Our chariot.

 Up, up, and away!

The top of the mountain was beautiful. There was a very nice garden/park setup with many benches, sidewalks, perfectly manicured grass and flowers. There was even a nice artificial water feature with falls and ponds.

We walked down a loooong series of step and worked out our 'going down stairs' muscles. Those muscles were thusly sore for the remainder of the trip...
Once we got down the hill it was early evening and we still had a few hours before dinner was served at the hostel so we explored the downtown/plaza area and saw some beautiful churches. We saw these churches during the daytime too but they looked a bit better lit up at night.