One did not simply enter the café, but waited until the maître d’ (in silver hair) beckoned one inside.

After our visit to the Bicentennial Museum, we were all hungry, and so we strolled up the Avenida de Mayo to the Gran Café Tortoni.  The oldest café in the city, the Tortoni opened in 1858,and enjoys the reputation of being a gathering place for the intelligentsia (and for foreign tourists, like ourselves, who read the Michelin Guide).  We chatted with a man from Ecuador and his wife while we waited on the doorstep for about ten minutes.

The decór was paneled wood with white tablecloths, and the waiters were attentive.

When earlier patrons left we were invited inside. The pub fare of the Tortoni was not remarkable — I remember I had a toasted cheese sandwich with a beer — but the ambiance was memorable.  I was particularly interested in the busts of the famous people who had sampled the coffee, including Borges and all the literary lights of Buenos Aires.  I had also heard that the Tortoni occasionally hosted tango presentations, but I saw no evidence of that.

It was fun to see the bronze plaques that hung outside the café.

After our luncheon at the Tortoni, we went across the street to the post office to purchase stamps for postcards that we had bought both in Brazil and in Argentina.  We should have mailed the Brazilian postcards in Brazil, because the cost of mailing a postcard was more than a U.S. dollar.  They were large stamps too, with the face of Nestor Kirchner, and his face obscured some of our messages.  Grrr.  We went on to the Teatro Colón.