Searching for Subte!

 Friday, October 14

Last night, after my nap that I vowed not to take, I was able to stay up until 10:30.  I didn't last two pages of my book once I went to bed though, I was out like a light.  I woke up a 6 am this morning.  Remember that we are still sort of on Victoria time, five hours ahead of Buenos Aires time.  I thought I would try to finish my chapter that I started the night before, made it another two pages and slept until 9 am!  We ate our bread and yogurt that we had bought the day before for breakfast and were out the door by 10:30.  We weren't in a rush.  

Our agenda for the day, buy Subte cards, go to the Teatro Colon to buy tickets for the symphony tonight, then to Centro to buy our ferry tickets to Montevideo next week.  Plus see some sights in Centro.  

Subte card.  We found the Subte station on Avenida Sante Fe which is quite close to us.  Down we decended, went to the ticket window, asked for cards in broken Spanish.  The guy said no, we have to get them above.  He may have said where but with the general crowd noice and the trains and the plexiglass and the very bad intercom system, all I head was garblegarble arriba garblegarblegarble.  So arriba we went, back up to the street to try to figure out where to get a subte card.  

Where we finally completed our Subte ticket odyssey. 

There were three guys in an electronic store, just hanging around so we started with them.  Buscando una tarjeta del Subte (I'm looking for a Subte card?).  Across the street, at the store with candy.  So, off we went to the candy store we just passed.  Nope, not that one.  The other store with candy, El Jevi, which is like a 7-11.  No, they don't have any cards.  Try some kiosks along the street.  We wandered along, sort of in the direction we needed to go, asking at every kiosk, corner store and El Jevi we passed.  I think on around story #8 we finally found a store that sold cards!  Hallelujah!  Here's your cards, sorry we can't load them, you have to go to another store for that.  Oh, bloody hell!  Fortunately, there was another El Jevi on the corner and they loaded up us.  

Finally we were able to descend once again and take the subway to Teatro Colon!  

Tickets to the symphony were sold out.  The 1pm English tour of the theatre had been converted to Portuguese.  But we did manage to grab two of the last few tickets to the 3pm English tour.  

Back on the Subte to the ferry terminal to get our tickets on the Burquebus ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevideo.  I had no idea how big or full this ferry might be/get so I wanted to get that done.  We got our tickets mostly pain free.  And by now, we were Subte experts.  We live on green line, we also took red line and blue line.  We didn't get lost once! 

Then we headed over to Cento to look at some historic statues (all completely unknown) and buildings (one in particular, the president's house where we could imagine Evita waving to the crowds from the balcony, or at least I could since I have been reading an Eva Peron history for the last million years and I still didn't finish it, but I hear she dies so spoiler alert!)

Random Statues:

Random Buildings:

If you squint, you can imagine Evita waving to us! 

Back on the Subte, back to the Teatro Colon for our tour.  It is a beautiful building.  In my usual badly behaved tourist fashion, I snuck into a few extra rooms while lingering at the back of the crowd.  Sorry, there will probably be lots of pictures.

The original entrance

The skylight in the entrance

the staircase 

I snuck into this room so I'm not sure what it is

The Gold Hall

hand laid tiles

A gorgeous statue called 'The Secret'

The ceiling and chandelier in the actual theatre

I snuck into another balcony so I could
get an unobscured shot of the theatre
and ceiling.  I got caught on this one.

boxes for the fancy folk

After that, we came back to the apartment for a very quick sit down.  Since we weren't going to the symphony as planned, we decide to just go to a movie in the Palermo Alto theatre which is just a block from us.  We saw some chicflick romance with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.  It was fine.  

It was only 7 when we got out so we killed some time with some window shopping along Sante Fe.  It's a nice, upscale street, despite their dearth of subte cards.  We found the Disco grocery store.  Can't turn that down.  But alas, do mirrored balls or loud music, just food. 

At 8 pm, it was finally late enough for restaurants to open for dinner.  Have I mentioned they eat later here.  Don't they know I am a senior citizen and I need to eat at 4:30!  We survived, barely.  Dinner at an Italian place on our street.  It was fine.  Restaurants are not cheap here.  $20 minimum for dinner, for sure.  

Time for bed so I can digest.