Buenos Aires 2

Argentine National Congress

My room had a TV and there were a couple of decent channels such the Latin American music one. Must buy some CDs at the end of the trip, I decided. There was also a TV España channel. Still looking towards Europe it seemed.

Breakfast at Coto was American: bread, jam, butter, eggs with ham, coffee with milk, orange juice and dulce de leche. The locals like the last, but I will never get used to it; too sweet and gooey. It's essentially caramelised condensed milk. My diary records that breakfast cost me the princely sum of 1 peso, or 1 USD. I think that was no mistake because Coto could sell those meals cheaply.

I found the porteños cordial. Once a couple of women offered to take my picture. But they seemed to be always on the move. I had to walk just as fast or I would get trampled, or so it seemed to me.

I noted that João Gilberto was playing on Sunday night so I decided to attend. The box office had a manual but effective booking system: a pegboard recorded which seats had been sold.

For lunch I had a couple of empanadas, of pollo and carne (chicken and meat). Not bad. Before I set out my ex-colleague whose family had migrated from Baires to the US when she was a teenager gave me a list of nostalgic food I should try, and I was going to work through the whole list. Dulce de leche was one, already did that. Sandwiches de miga were essentially the same as English tea sandwiches. I had one of jamon and huevo (ham and egg). Ok, they get a pass mark. I couldn't find bananitas de chocolate, which I suspect are these: bananita dolca. Must have been a childhood treat for my friend. Alfajores were too sweet for my taste. Like everywhere else in the world, French croissants and baguettes had conquered patisseries.

Bookshops were well-stocked. Besides Spanish, I found English, French and Italian works. The antiquarian bookshops had a lot of ancient stuff. Porteños read really esoteric stuff; at a magazine vendor in the underground I saw titles such as Journal of Mass Transit!