Rom, Anders, Karin, Dad, Me, Muhammed, Ian
Then we headed for the peaceful stroll in the Japanese garden.
Pretty bright red bridges, beautiful trees and the biggest Koi I have ever seen with cavernous mouths and long lips. They had to weigh 10 lbs and were 2 feet long. We wandered around for 40 minutes, got a popsicle. We met back up at the gate, made a game plan and jumped back in our cabs (that dad had very impressively worked out for us at the hotel.)
We headed over to the botanical gardens, still in Palermo, which is a huge garden in the middle of the city with paths, benches, ponds, green houses and tons of very mellow, very sweet kitties!
I, of course, petted one briefly. I don’t know why I was concerned about germs. I held filthy pigeons landing all over me yesterday. I guess I’m growing up. I’ll have to do something about that. On the way out of the park, we saw a dog walker. There are a whole bunch of these in the city, and it's amazing how many dogs they'll take at a time!
So after that we were all a bit sleepy and hungry so back in our cabs and off to Café Tortoni, a notable cafe from the glory days of Buenos Aires.
It had stained glass, yellowing marble, tiny tables and was beautiful and ornate both inside and out. We were all happt to take a load off and have a snack. A charming waited remembered our order for 8 people without writing it down. The order of the food coming out is weird! We’ve experienced this everywhere we’ve eaten. Carla got a salad for her lunch, that came out first. 10 or so minutes later our little sandwiches came. 10 or so more minutes later, Ian and Ander’s burgers came. We decided that politely waiting was out of the question and dug in. We were all very hungry. Of course the bill took forever (another things we’ve noticed everywhere) so Anders, Carla and I for into a great conversation about running and races and all that. We were all excited and fired up! After we figured out the bill and took a group photo, we headed out.
Our cabs were gone as we’d only hired them for 3 hours and we wanted to ride the A line of the subway because it was the original stations and wooden cars from 1910. Ian was very excited about this, so off we went. Karin and Anders headed back to the hotel from here. We went down into the subway station, figured out the ticket situation and hopped on. It looked like an old Swensons restaurant, wood inside, rings to hold on to on straps and the windows were open.
Very pretty and worked fine for being nearly 100 years old. So we rode 2 stops, got off, swapped around to the other side and rode 3 stops back. We came out of the station at Plaza de Mayo. Carla and Ian decided to head back to the hotel so the 4 of us hopped back on the subway (D line this time) and went over to El Ateneo, a bookstore in a building that used to be a theatre. Beautifully preserved, books on the balconies and a café in the stage area. Really impressive.
I was skeptical before we headed over as I was a bit tired but it was well worth it. I hope they sell enough books to keep it up.
So after this, we jumped in a cab and went back to the hotel. I wanted to do a little shopping on Florida, so dad went back to the room and I went to some shops. I wanted a pair of sandals, but they didn’t have my size, big surprise there Sasquatch!! So I got a skirt and a very cute sweater for Gemma. Now we’re in the room relaxing and catching up on journals and pictures. Basically it was a fantastic day leisurely wandering around the city. 190 pictures yesterday, probably similar today. Buenos Aires is very beautiful city. The people are very relaxed. All over the botanical park were people snoozing on park benches, lying in the sun, eating lunch. A really relaxed culture. I like it a lot here. So at 7pm we met the crew for dinner at Asia. Should be pretty great! I just thought of something funny. If we have a hard time reading a standard Argentine menu, how are we going to do with a Chinese menu? Time will tell.
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