La Boca

Took a bus to La Boca on Tuesday which is a historic neighborhood famous for its multicolored dwellings. It's mostly a tourist trap now, but has some quality elements including stands where artists sell their work and a number of restaurants featuring outdoor tango dancing:

 

Phil Collins on the High Seas

We are right now on the ferry to Colonia, Uruguay watching a concert video of Phil Collins singing "Take a Look at Me Now" on the monitors.

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)

Hotel y Almuerzo

Took a taxi from the airport. I had heard horror stories about drivers in Buenos Aires but as far as I can tell it isn't any worse than New York. I took a few random shots out of the window of the cab:

The Argentine government very recently signed a law to allow gay marriage, so there was quite a bit of graffiti along those lines. This particular graffiti espoused a somewhat unique take on the issue:

The bit on the left translates to "No to marriage, gay or not gay," while the bit on the right is a declaration of resistance against "heteronormativity and assimilation." This is an interesting town so far.

Around noon we checked into Art Hotel, which is kind of a boutique renovation in the ritzy Recoleta neighborhood. The room wasn't ready till 2 pm so we decided to go get a light lunch at a place called La Querencia which turned out to be, how you say, no so light:

The dish I had was called Puchero Criollo, kind of a mixed meat and veggie stew. It was 40,000 times better than the food-like matter we were served on the plane. I'm very impressed so far by the cuisine. Coke is made with sugar not with high-fructose corn syrup here, so that was yummy too.

By the way the weather here is awesome, hovering around 50 F which feels so good after the 100 degree weather we have been having in New York.

Viaje

The overnight flight was not terribly painful. I think I got 3 hours of sleep which was much better than nothing. The plane was super cold, Hilary had to don her ninja gear:

The food was, how you say, no so good:

At some point in the middle of the night we crossed into the southern hemisphere which is a first for me. Here's a screenshot to prove it:

Once we landed at Ministro Pistarini International Airport we went through immigration and customs, which was basically painless. There was a rather stiff entry fee of $140 for each of us. It was instituted last year in response to entry fees that the U.S. charges for Argentines to enter the U.S., which is entirely understandable.

JFK

Let's get this party started with a boring post about how we got to the airport without incident, though the flight is delayed 30 minutes. What makes this marginally more interesting is that I'm blogging from my n900 smartphone. I am holding the future in my hand.

Argentina!

This blog is officially back in business. I leave this evening from New York's JFK airport on a non-stop, overnight flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Stay tuned.