Because it's Saturday

01.11.2004

After a long Friday night out at Mongo's Rock Bottom Café (which is actually a pub, not a café), I slept well into Saturday afternoon. Finally crawled out of bed, and went down to the post office (no mail) and on to Calle Sagarnaga.

Calle Sagarnaga's a famous tourist street. Here you find all the artesanias you can possibly want. I hoped to find a nice, cheap little chess set. And an alpaca sweater (since I wear sweaters every day in La Paz, I figured need a larger repertoire). Found a good sweater; no luck finding the chess set I wanted (yes, I know, I'm very picky).

Heading back towards the Prado, I spotted a sidewalk casera w/ a little pocket magnetic chess set and figured it's worth Bs. 6. I also bought a cacho set (Bolivian version of Yatzee, a leather cup & five die). Headed down to Café La Terraza for coffee, salad, and WiFi.

Paola called. We met at Plaza Abaroa and decided to walk up to downtown. I'd read about a little bohemian spot (La Luna) near the post office and thought we'd give it a try. It was bohemian all right. We weren't sure at first why the door was closed but had a buzzer. We were let in, and as we walked into the joint — which was full of gringo backpackers — we drowned in overly-loud Jimmy Hendrix & the reek of marijuana. Quickly turned around & walked out.

So. Instead. We ended up at Marbella, on the Prado. The place has some of the best pastries in town (they also serve meals — the llama steak is excellent). Here, we played a deeply concentrated game of chess. All the while, listening to a pair of nearby German tourists make fun of the wait staff in a most irritating way. They finally left, and the whole place joined in a collective sigh of relief.

From there, we walked back down to Sopocachi, stopping for some sidewalk french fries (Paola prefers salted foods to sweets) and then back to my place. I taught Paola how to play cacho — and she proceeded to crush me in three out of four games. After my third defeat, I decided it was time to walk Paola home.

Tonight, we're trying a Thai restaurant (Maphrao On) in San Miguel. Then off to the cinema to see Los hijos del último jardín.

Posted by Miguel at 05:07 PM

Comments

only in La Paz do you, "We met at Plaza Abaroa and decided to walk UP to DOWNtown."

I miss Bolivia already... We got a snow storm over the weekend and it is all cold and wet everywhere. No fun.

Posted by: sam at January 12, 2004 03:10 PM

Yeah, it sounds funny when you say "up to downtown", doesn't it? But it's a slight uphill walk from Sopocachi to "downtown" ... so you have to be really in the mood for it. Too bad the place wasn't what we thought, we walked all that way for nothing.

Posted by: Miguel at January 12, 2004 05:15 PM