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Other entries in Buenos Aires

Fun with the Police

We woke up early enough and enjoyed breakfast at our hotel (cereal, fruit, coffee and juice) and hopped in a cab to Recoleta, hoping the vendors would be out today.  We decided to stop into the cemetary, which Dad has never seen.  It never disappoints, with incredible crypts and crazy guilt-inducing religious sculptures at every turn.  We saw Evita's crypt and a pirate crypt and then left for the vendors, where dad bought a gift for Yaakov and we mostly admired and didn't buy.  We then hopped a cab to the Jardin Japonese in Palermo, where we walked around the koi ponds and bridges and pretty little trees, but mostly felt like it was a pretty lame Japanese garden.  It's supposed to be this peaceful respite from the city, but they are redoing a lot of the landscaping so it is mostly a microcosm of the chaotic city rather than a respite.  The big news, however, is that the cab driver who drove us to the garden wouldn't take Dad's money since he said it was ¨falso¨ which provoked some surprise from us, since we had been using the same money from the casa de cambio since he got it out.  But when we sat down to lunch in the Japanese restaurant in the gardens (salmon sushi for dad, noodles and veggies for me) and they too refused the bills, we knew that something was up.  Sure enough, we looked at the bills he had remaining and all 3 100's were ¨falso¨and in fact shared the same serial number.  (I guess the old guy is losing it...he never would have fell for such a scheme a few years ago).  We figured out that he had used all the smaller change he received from the cambio (which were presumably real bills) and all that remained were the fake 100's they slipped him.  We made a decision to return there to see if we could get his money back (stay tuned....).

We stopped at the Teatro Colon on the way back to the hotel so I could try to exchange my ticket from September (the show was cancelled due to a workers strike but was to take place my last night in BA, so I had no opportunity to return the ticket at the time), but of course, the man at the ticket desk said only his boss could help me and he wasn't there on the weekends.  So then we returned to the hotel and picked up dad's receipt from the casa de cambio. 

We arrived at the Casa de Cambio and decided the best approach would be to not make a scene, but to simply ask for change for the bills we received from them, giving them an opportunity to give us back our money without a fuss.  But, of course, the man at the window said ¨these are fake¨and refused to take them back, so we decided to go to the police.  The policia federal are stationed on every corner on Florida (a major tourist shopping street) and we spoke with them about the casa de cambio, and they confirmed that it was not the first time this had occured there.  Long story short, they arrested the kid working at the window and took us to the police station to file a report.  My dad had no idea if the kid they arrested was the one working there when we changed money (it had been 2 days now) so we made sure to ask the police to release the kid as soon as possible and locate the jefe of the casa de cambio.  The police were incredibly nice to both us and the kid, and our entire experience with the BA police was wondreful.  An interesting note  - before arresting the kid, the police called 3 random witnesses over to attest to the fact that they were arresting him and reading him his rights (i suspect this resulted from the mysterious ¨disappearing¨ of Argentine citizens during more corrupt times). Total currency lost....$100 US.  An interesting experience with the Argentine justice system....priceless.

After spending some time at the pòlice station making out our report, we went to dinner in Recoleta at a beautiful restaurant called San Babila, just outside the cemetary doors (but hidden in a shady garden) .  Aftre salad and gnocchi and steak and risotto, we headed to the nearly movie palace to see King Kong (in English, with Spanish subtitles).  I call it a palace because the theater was really incredible, an enormous screen, very clean and comfortable velvet seats (assigned seating is normal in movie theaters here) and with a great sound system.  I enjoyed the movie very much - thought the cinematography was pretty awesome in the NYC scenes, and thought the CGI Kong was a revelation.  I'm a sucker for movies set in the Depression (Cradle Will Rock was so underrated).

We got home to the hotel late (1;30 am) and went to sleep after a full, full day.

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