You´re going to have to wait for the pictures

Alright guys, I have been snap-shotting for the past few days, but, unfortunately for you, I loaned out the fancy neon-green device I use to upload my pictures and the fella´I let borrow it went out of town for the weekend. So use your imagination and then come back on Monday or Tuesday and see how accurate your collective mental images were.

Anyways, Wednesday:

I decided Wednesday was a good night to not sit at home and watch Law and Order (a seriously great show -- why did I never watch this when I lived in the U.S.?). I mean ... it has Ice-T. As a cop!

Moving on. I went down to the boardwalk area by the river. The river, as far as I can tell, has two parts: there is the poor, port area, which is more of a shanty town with rusted boats and boating equipment, and then there is the nice, well-lit boardwalk area, which has Hooter´s, T.G.I.Fridays, a frigate with Christmas lights up and down the rigging, guys in nice suits speaking English, and a ton of cops. I didn´t really want to end up with Ice-T trying to figure out what happened to me in the poor part of town, so I took the Subte to the ¨Microcenter¨, which is ironically the least micro part of town.

Mike: ¨Wow, that´s a cool series of statues with spray paint all over them, let me whip out my camera.¨
Innocent Couple sitting by said Statues (whisper): ¨Vení!¨ ... Ok, I didn´t catch the rest well enough to quote it, but what they told me, as far as I could tell, was that the gang of people that spray-painted the statues were watching from across the street and it would be a very bad idea for me to take a picture of their handiwork. Whatever they said, the ït would be a very bad idea for me to take a picture¨was the most obvious part of the message, so I got the hell out of dodge.

I went the wrong way, but I ended up finding the giant obselisk that is kind of in the middle of the city. This is going to be the easiest one for you to imagine, since just about all obselisks look the same -- think Washington Monument, but in the middle of an intersection in Buenos Aires and you´ve just about got it. After that I back-tracked, found the ´boardwalk´area, as I call it, although there were no boards, and picked out about a dozen places I want to go eat when the weather is nicer.

I ended up getting a little lost on the way to where I was supposed to find a bus, but I usually write that off as getting to know the city, and I made it home in one piece.

Thursday: Umm. I watched Hellboy. Oh yeah, and I took a tour of one of Argentina´s nicest arenas, which was a bit strange. Because the inside really looks kind of like a YMCA ... I expect Gillette is a little nicer, even the Superdome probably is, but I wouldn´t know. Actually, I have been inside Fenway, and it was much nicer. But the training facilities were very nice, and we got to go down to the field, which is really the only reason I wanted to go. We also got to go into where the President watches the games: it´s good to be President. It was like a boxed in area, with chairs, nothing that surprised me, except that the glass window could be lowered so that it was open-air and you could really get into the atmosphere of the game (awesome). The TV in the room was seriously weak though ... the stadium is in an upper-middle class neighborhood, so I wouldn´t be surprised if they bought it at a local yard sale in the mid-90´s. Gotta save money where you can, I guess..

In the case of the stadium though, a picture is worth a 1000 words.

Friday: Well, now I´m getting tired of writing. But I went to the Zoo and realized that there was a huge line of little kids (because they are out on winter vacation still) and decided to keep walking. I got to the free Botanical Garden, realized that it was full of old people instead of little kids, but also realized that it smelled like fresh flowers instead of horse poop, so I gave it a shot. It was really cool ... kind of like a really nice, aromatic forest in the middle of a really big, dirty city.

In the case of the Garden, a picture is worth a 1000 words. At least that´s my excuse, because I´m not writing any more ... I´m heading out to Van Koning, my favorite Dutch place nearby.

Hasta la vista, baby.