Buenos Aires,the subway
I don't know what the fascination I have with trains, subways etc.. but something in me just wants to take pictures of these moving boxes on rails.
Today taking the subway to no place in particular I took the subway line A, which turns out to be the oldest subway here.
The trains looked as if they were the original trains back from 1900, complete with wood cars and benches, and leather strap handles. While taking these subways I was struck by the number of people trying to make a buck (peso ) from inside the train... Little boys and girls couldnt be older than 6 or 7 would walk up and down inside the cars handing out little hair bands, or toys, anything they could get their hands on, and lay it on everyone lap. Then a few minutes later they would walk by and pick up these things and every so often someone sure enough would buy one.. seems like the going rate for these little subway things is 2 peso's.. Much like NYC where its hard to take a subway without being offered batteries, here in BA, you are guilted into buying things from the very young. All in all the subway here is no better or worse than the 7 train in queens, excpect they seem a bit less crowded, and more frequent.
The city itself is somewhat of a letdown. Except for ave 9 de Julio which sort of looks like times square, with its blocks and blocks of tourist shopping all arround it the rest of the city, (at least what I can see via subway stops) appears to be a nothing all that special. Not really beautiful, old and new buildings, dog poop on every sidewalk, no real interesting architecture per se, but lots and lots of pizza and epmanada joints.
Tomorrow I am off to the large flee market which is only open on sundays, complete with street dancers.. we will see, if any of the hoopla over this area lives up to the hype.
more later.
Bob
Argentina after a few days
After 17 hours on a bus.. yes you read that right, a BUS from BA to Iguazu Falls, I can tell you that bus travel while long is nothing close to what we expect in the US. The
buses have full sleeper seats much like what you get in first class travel on a train, complete with meals served and in seat movies.
Once here the falls are ..what can I can say.. are large, it took about two days to see them all. The best part was going on the boat trip under the falls themselves. I am trying to get the pictures posted on the gallery, they should be up in a day or two. The town is a much like any third world little town, complete with trinkets for sale, lots of expensive clothing stores.. Unique here is the ice cream. Quite a few hand made ice cream parlors selling Italian style ice cream. The food here is quite heavy. like the burger I had yesterday was a 1/2 pound burger with ham, cheese, a fried egg
Buenos Aires After a Day
Ill be posting more pictures soon, but I wanted to put out a few comments and photo after just about a day in the city.
Boy was I suprised to find a Segafredo coffee house right in the center of Buenos aires.
Tomorrow it a trip via rail, and boat to discover the area around the city.
More about this later.
My Buenos Aires Gallery
My Recent Experience with Digital Television
Everyone should be very aware that mid next month the US is going to basically turn off the airwaves we have for all current TV broadcasts, and turn on something new called
Digital TV,
and since I have a HD TV from 2004, I should be good to go.. I didn't worry..
Then I read that Digital Signals were already being broadcast, and that all I needed to do was configure my over the air TV to now read from the Digital Signals..(sounds simple) except my Samsung Bigscreen did not appear to have anything called DTV turner.. or anything like that .. It has the ability to connect to hdmi and component cables, DVI cables, PC Cables.. All digital signals, but no over the air digital turner.
Shit, fuck, damm.. So I call Samsung.. to confirm what I was seeing.. my 4 year old TV, was not going to work ! more shit fuck damm.. ..
Ya, according to Samsung consumer 800 number call in service.. it appears my TV wont be able to get these new digital signals over the air... So I ask, What is their soltuion ? and they didnt have one.. other than to say that companies out there are selling converter boxs, but they no nothing about these converter box's .
Happens to be that I know.. about them, they are digital to anaolog box's meaing that this new digital signal, which many of the stations are in nice HI DEF will be downconverted to standard old anaolog signals to be viewed on my HiDef Screen.
So the government is giving everyone the ability to get a free converter box so their older tv's can view the new digital TV Signal in the old crappy way they used to.. But me.. with a nice HD TV, I am just out of luck.
Back to the web.. more research, and after quite a bit of searching I find this.
Samsung DTBH260F HDTV Terrestrial Receiver. Which turns out to the only fix out there for my needs.
It is a digital TV turner which pumps out hdmi, and or component HD Signals, so people like myself who have a slightly older HD big screen can in fact use it with this new hd/ Digital broadcast.
What I found so funny about this, was to start I called samsung tech support, and they couldnt offer me a soltuion... but they had it right there..
Right hand doesnt know what the left hand is doing I guess.
Hope everyone had a good new year, and lets not let these economic new get us down.
Bob Lee
