Día Dos

Had a rainy second day in Argentina. It rained all day long and was in the 40's temperature-wise but I still prefer this weather to the heat wave up north. The first mission of the day was to buy a SIM card for my Nokia n900 superphone. Here I am pictured attempting to triangulate the position of a place to buy such a thing with my phone and a map of the city, a scene that earned me the title "map boy."

 We decided to go to a mobile phone kiosk in the fanciest mall in BA, Galerias Pacífico:

The perky Movistar salesgirl hooked me up with a SIM but said it wouldn't be active until tomorrow. After that we headed toward Café Tortoni, some fancy restaurant. The guidebook warned there might be a line of tourists and they were right. The whole street was dead except for a gaggle of people waiting outside. We didn't want to stand in the rain so we decided to just go into some random place and have some random food, which we did, and it was adequate.

After that we went to el Museo de la Ciudad which had an extensive exhibit on Yerba Mate, the national drink of Argentina. Here I am pointing out a map of Germany showing sources of porcelain mate cups and solidifying my "map boy" title:

There was also a substantial exhibit on toys common in Argentina, including a small selection of antique tricycles, along with this photograph:

 The caption at the bottom reads:

Grandmother, mother, and grandson, the latter mounted on a tricycle, which, according to the size of its wheels, would permit a notable velocity. What is not a toy is the corset that is squeezing the waist of the mother, distributing upwards and downwards that which the corset has been tasked to reduce. (Photograph circa 1895)