First of all we won’t talk about Day One.
After I finish this I’ll pack up my computer, schlep down eight flights and head to the nearby cafe that has wifi. BTW I gave this hotel a piece of my mind before paying the bill, but I am staying. There were many factors that went into the decision. Some of them follow: I didn’t come to BA to sit in a hotel room and be on-line. Any hotels I might change to would cost at least 50% more than this one and they would be in a touristy area. This is not a touristy area, so living here and walking the streets I am taken for a Portenyo (sic — what residents of BA call themselves). I’ve been living in a cafe named “Army” where they have wifi and a marvelous menu ejecutivo — for 31.90 pesos, about $8.60 — today I had a glass of beer, marvellous rolled chicken around, mixed vegetables, all of it inside a pastry, with a huge mound of mashed potatoes, great bread with butter and cheese, flan and coffee.
So, eventually today I bought a 10-ride subway ticket for about $3.10 and went downtown. That probably didn’t go real well, since I wasn’t sure where I was going. I stumbled onto Calle Florida (luckily not literally — not like falling down the up escalator at LAX on Monday). I next stumbled onto the Movistar phone company main office where I wanted to buy a SIM card for my 2-SIM quad phone. Ah, but they told me I had to show my passport to buy it, and I had left my passport back in the hotel because BA is supposed to be so dangerous. That’s when I took the subte (subway) back to my hotel, stopped at Army for the lunch I described, and made my way back to Movistar, where for 12 pesos and a rather long bureaucratic hassle I got a BA phone number and enough money to make about 8 minutes of local calls. Oh well…
After that I rushed back to the double decker tourist bus place where a guide told me earlier the last bus left at 7:30. I got there at 5:50 to learn that the last bus leaves at 17:30 — 5:30. Now as I think I said I’m preparing to pack up my laptop and head to Army — too early for dinner here in BA, so I’ll have “tea” and get on-line.
A thought or two from Army: I prefer the ancient wooden cars on the A-line subte. The windows are open and a bit of air reaches my face even though in both directions I was packed so closely into the car with a lot of strangers. When I got off I suggested to all that were left on that we do the same tomorrow, but with clothes off tomorrow. I think that would be more fun and hardly less intimate than what we all did today.
My second thought — every self-respecting tourist must put places and peoples into categories. I’ve decided that Buenos Aires is Budapest in Spanish: decaying elegance overlayed with a patina of class. One thing that struck me as strange was that even though cobble stones and coffin-sized sections of pavement were missing everywhere, even the “best areas,” the city hires persons with dustpans and little brooms to walk around sweeping up papers and cigarette butts.
