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In a country that has siestas, you would think the banking hours would be longer. Most banks close for good at 3pm. Considering that Portenos eat dinner at 10pm and go to bed past midnight, they probably wake later as well. Our biggest goal on Tuesday was to change over some traveler’s checks at the American Express building in Retiro.

The first sight off the subway was a large colonial style building with a beautiful gold and iron gate. It was apparently the museum of armaments of Argentina. Turning around, we noticed the plaza of San Martin, the liberator of Argentina. The plaza features a massive statue of San Martin ahorse and charging and 2 inch square tiles covering all of it’s walkways and open areas. There were English speaking “guides” asking for donations to fight diseases who were at least helpful enough to point us toward the American Express building.

After briefly looking over the park and spying an old bell tower from a vista looking toward the ocean, we headed inside. It was a clean modern building with very heavy security and lines everywhere for everything. Lorna was directed downstairs for traveler’s checks and I was instantly worried this would become an all day affair. A long, slow moving line zigged back and forth between barriers along the width of the room, 4 or 5 layers deep. Everyone looked like they had been there a while. Luckily, there was a separate line for traveler’s checks with much fewer people but moving just as little.

I set off to find the bathroom and was directed to the front reception desk. I asked for the bathroom in my horrible Spanish and was asked for my passport. The woman checked it over and looked at me, before instructing me to take off my sunglasses so that I could be documented with a photograph. Then I was directed through a security gate and was finally let into the bathroom. This occurred simply because the bathroom had been placed behind the security gate which I believe was intended to keep people from reaching the rest of the offices in the building. The security was far over the top and reminded me of the day during the Occupy Wall Street protests when police simply blocked off the blocks of the banking offices and demanded proof that you worked there to enter. In this scenario, the part of the subway station within those blocks was played by the bathroom, which was no special lavatory.

Lorna had moved up a few feet when I returned. There were still 3 people ahead of us and the line was stopped at a corner. Customers were called behind a tinted glass wall, presumably for the privacy of their transactions, but it gave the line an ominous feel. A slow and unmoving ominous feel. Looking over at the longer line for regular banking, I thought back to Carrefour and all the other customer service lines we’d encountered so far. I decided that Argentina either did not view the people in line as having their time wasted or simply had no culture of respect for such. If you have banking to do, it must be important, right?

When we reached the counter, Lorna filled out her forms and handed over her checks. We found out part of the reason that the line took so long was that the forms needed to be cross checked by someone in another room, leaving us to wait by ourselves for several minutes. There was also a lengthy period where the man at the desk looked irritated at his screen for about 10 minutes and eventually said: “okay” and handed us our stack of bills. I don’t know if it was a computer delay, but if everything checks out so slow, my previous theories on wait times is probably that processes here are simply inefficient.

Free of the bank, we set out for lunch. My first attempt at navigation took us to a shopping area that was more like a street turned into a mall. It reminded me a bit of 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, but with taller buildings and less open air. We picked up a map from the tourist information booth and set ourselves on the right path to a pizza place mentioned in the guide book.

On our way there, we crossed the busiest intersection in the country, possibly in the world. There are 18 lanes of traffic in one street and another 6 or 8 in the cross street. To get across, you have to wait for 3 walk signals. We arrived at our lunch destination and had a very tasty Italian style pizza (thin crust, less focused on the sauce and toppings cover the entire top) of arugula and Parmesan cheese.

Having taken our passports and a sizable sum of cash with us, I had not wanted to walk around the rest of the afternoon. We took the subway home for a relatively quiet evening of leftovers and rest. It is nice to have a comfortable home base on a long trip like this.

Buenos Aires is like Spain in its people’s appetites for staying up late. Lorna and I have been staying up until 1 or 2 AM most nights and have often been the first to bed in the house by a few hours. This means we wake up closer to noon than nine, and Monday was no different.

In our modern world, kids are more interested in using the computer to watch videos and play games than they are in the TV. This has made sharing the computer for checking email difficult. I had brought my wireless router with me to South America but was worried about it being destroyed by the 220V power. Previously, I’d tested my power strip in the socket and knocked out the power to the house while ruining the power strip instantly. One of my goals for Monday was to buy a wireless router for Sarah’s house, which would accomplish the goals of sharing the internet and removing the need for multiple outlets.

Sarah took us out to Avenida San Juan, the largest commercial street near her house in Boedo. We ended up back at the electronics division of Carrefour and I bought a wireless router for $299. That price may shock you, but only because of the way they denote currency in Argentina. Pesos, the local currency are shown with a $ sign, just like US dollars. The exchange rate is approximately 4.25 Pesos to 1 US Dollar. So the router was around US$70. That’s slightly expensive but it turned out to be a pretty nice router.

Maybe it’s just Carrefour, but it seems like getting checked out at any larger store takes far too long here. Waiting to pay for the router was probably a 15 minute affair which included calling a special employee to handle my debit card. It didn’t help that afterward, we decided to pick up a few groceries at the previously mentioned grocery store. Lorna got in line as soon as we entered the store and it proved to be a smart move. Except that when we arrived with our cart, the women behind Lorna in line got angry and said we were cutting. Sarah opted to give up our place in line rather than explain to them. It’s possible that it’s something no one does in this culture, though I’ve seen it many times in the US.

That afternoon, Lorna and I went to the park with Sarah’s daughters Juana and Eva, Eva’s boyfriend Juanci, and the two dogs Perla and Peri. The dogs are extremely hyper and are often confined to the roof so they do not race through the house destroying things. They could benefit from a few weeks of training to calm them down to house living and more trips to the park where they’re allowed to run free with the other dogs.

Residential areas in Buenos Aires have sidewalks that are often riddled with dog shit. The city has given up enforcing that owners pick up the droppings as they fall and simply send by cleaners about once a week. I’ve never been more thankful that people in the US [mostly] clean up after their dogs. The park, where dogs mostly run free with each other, is even worse than the sidewalks. It requires vigilance to avoid stepping in what we have begun to jokingly refer to as landmines.

As an outsider, the idea of the so-called landmines has a few problems. The first is obviously that no one likes stepping in dog doo. There’s also the smell. But the one that’s troubled me the most is I spend so much time looking at the ground, I can’t appreciate the environment as much. I have also found it more difficult to memorize or notice streets.

Dogs in Buenos Aires, or at least in Boedo are rarely spayed or neutered. Though they are allowed to play freely in the park and run without leashes or supervision, you must be careful that your dogs aren’t engaging in any potential puppy production. Perla, the most energetic of dogs, is also fond of running up to picnicking families and checking to see what they’ve got. Peri, on the other hand, took a nap in a warm pool of oily mud.

Among all of this Juana played and danced in the park while Eva and Juanci played guitar and sang in English and Spanish. Eva is looking to begin school at a music conservatory and plays the guitar and piano quite skillfully. Juanci, though not attending school for music, can also play well. His real talent is his voice which I was very impressed with. I played a little of my harmonica, but having no real musical education, felt like I was ruining the songs rather than helping in any way.

The weather and the park were beautiful and we sat beneath large shady trees in the grass. There were some ruins of an old wall which played a role in a previous revolution or war. The general dirtiness of the park was problematic for true relaxation, though. Coupled with the constant danger of a mud-footed Perla crashing through us, it was not what you’d expect from a warm breezy afternoon in a public park.

When we returned home, Sarah had made stuffed peppers, canalones (sp?), beets, fruit salad, tomato sauce from whole tomatoes, and more. She’d cooked up enough food to last the family (and us) for some time before Christmas. That night we all gathered for a family dinner of giant bell peppers stuffed with rice, beef, and garlic topped with cheese and baked in the oven. They were a delicious end to the evening.

I woke many times but never for long until finally rising from bed at 2pm. My head and stomach twisted from the hangover. Lorna was also feeling the effects of overindulgence but Sarah apparently was not. We had originally planned to go to Puerto Madero but opted instead for San Telmo because of the Sunday market.

The subway in Buenos Aires is excellent. The stations are cleaner than New York and the trains appear newer. Though they are covered in graffiti on the outside, the windows are unscratched and the seats are clean. The tunnels have no particular odor and are not piled with garbage. The stations are an older style and the one closest to Sarah’s house even has a wooden escalator.

Exiting Bolivar station, I saw a very interesting park with statues and surrounding buildings of the beautiful colonial architecture we usually expect from Europe. I wanted to explore, but we were also on our way to the market. A few blocks down we turned onto a small street that I thought only housed a few tables and carts of tourist merchandise. Instead, I realized the market stretched on for almost 20 blocks, seemingly never ending as I looked up for the end of it.

I resolved immediately not to buy anything right away to avoid impulse buys and carrying armloads of stuff. It turned out to be a good idea because I’d already seen 15 things I wanted in the first three blocks.

We stopped near a cathedral that I wanted to take some pictures of and first noticed a museum of toys across the street from it. The entry was 1 peso or about 23 cents. There were lots of interesting off-beat toys from bygone eras but the most interesting part was that the museum used to be a private residence circa 1910. A three story townhouse with twice the square footage of our apartment on each floor overlooking a gorgeous cathedral in downtown Buenos Aires seems like a pretty awesome pad, if you ask me.

After leaving the toy museum I discovered that we could look inside the cathedral as well. I have no background in catholic history and the signs were all in Spanish, but there were some really beautiful artifacts. There was also a room of self flagellation items and some pretty gruesome carvings of a dying Jesus.

We began searching for food when we left the cathedral, which took my attention away from the market. We walked past many places but nothing that particularly caught my eye. The street performers began to make their appearance, including one famous man who dresses like he is caught in a gale force wind storm.

It was a long walk to the restaurant that Sarah had in mind but worthwhile. I had a cold banana milkshake and part of Lorna’s ham & cheese sandwich. The walls of the cafe were carved up with decades worth of names of lovers and hooligans who’d sat there before us. Our waiters wore tuxedo vests and seemed quite confident in the quality of their establishment. Sarah said she thought they were all drunk on the job when someone broke a third glass behind us near the kitchen.

Making our way out of the market we were going to head to Boca, famous for Tango dancing in the street and at the restaurants. Sarah originally wanted to take a taxi but Lorna noticed that they were very close on the map and we decided to walk because of the weather.

We walked a long time and it started to seem like we were lost. To take a bus we would need coins to pay the fare but no kiosks were willing to give coins as change. We stopped in a hostel and got a map which showed we were quite close so we continued walking. On our way we found a very beautiful park with terrace steps and a view of the city. A band was playing Pink Floyd with a backdrop of political graffiti on a war memorial statue.

We still had not reached Boca and continued walking. We were lost again. We stopped for directions two more times, continuing to walk through quiet neighborhoods and along roads of rubble filled empty lots. I saw lots of amazing graffiti murals and two burned out cars. There were bums and packs of teenagers and pleasant retirees around each corner. Stray dogs and their ever-present droppings were the sign we were not in a tourist district. After more directions from a helpful man at a stop-light, we reached the waterfront. The smell of rotting fish or garbage came on with a force. As we began to walk along the water, some police blocked our way and told us it was too dangerous to walk that way, pointing us back and toward the Boca district we had been searching for for hours.

The streets of Tango dancers and restaurants was actually less impressive than I expected. Or maybe I was too tired from walking all afternoon. We made two passes by but soon wanted to go home. We’d tried to get coins for the bus again only to have an argument with the booth owner about their availability. I relented and suggested we take a taxi home.

Later, Sarah took her housekeeper, Olga, out for dinner in farewell before her vacation. Sarah ordered empanadas to be delivered for us and Juana before leaving. Lorna and I helped Jauana get dinner and put her to bed before watching Ghost in the Shell on Lorna’s laptop and retiring for some much needed sleep.