Asunción - City of...

...Cabbies constantly sitting in little huts watching futbol while waiting on customers.
...Money changers (cambistas) constantly pegging every passerby, especially me the obvious gringo, with "¿Cambio...cambio?"
..."cibers" in which the internet goes down every 15 minutes or so while trying to finish a year-overdue research paper!
...misleadingly named local dishes that make one look quite foolish.



Thus was my time spent in Paraguay´s meek capital city. Rain and working on the overdue assignment unfortunately kept me indoors for the majority of my stay in Asunción.



And my plans for cutting the rug and going crazy Saturday night were hindered by my laying down to read and rest up for the amazing night to come at about 10 pm. I woke at 4 am to decide that it was too late even by South American standards to get a start on the partying at that point. Asunción doesn´t even know what it missed out on...and neither do I!



The Senate building above. The Presidential Palace at several different times below.





I did meet up with a motorcycle friend of Mea and Tim from their trip. Patricio, Cecilia and I spent a fun hour or two at a café catching up about everything from the upcoming Copa Mundial (the World Cup...it starts this week. The whole world will stop - minus the US, because we for some reason don´t value the greatness of soccer like the rest of the world.) to local eats such as Sopa Paraguaya (the direct translation is Paraguayan Soup).

Now...I´m no genius when it comes to languages, but Paraguayan Soup would give me the idea that it comes in soup form. I generally take that to mean a liquidy substance served in a bowl-esque device of sorts. ¡Oh how sly you are, Paraguay! I sat at a restaurant for about 10 minutes after receiving something resembling corn bread waiting for the accompanying soup. Nope! I eventually had to ask.Sopa Paraguaya is simply a corn breadish treat made that has onion, cheese and eggs mixed in with the corn bread. I can´t imagine how many foreigners do the exact same waiting game of stupidity. I did end up ordering a soup just to accompany the Sopa Paraguaya.

Patricio was dying because he said there is an Argentine comic who has a great skit about Sopa Paraguaya. He waits with a SPOON ready to consume the local treat and won´t switch utensils when he finally realizes the error because of his pride. My only option was a fork...until the real soup came!



Washing windows at Lido-Bar. I breakfasted several times at Lido-Bar and loved the place. However, they gave me the run-around about taking photos and kept handing me off to someone else at every turn. After trying for quite a while I gave up. The waitresses all wear matching orange skirt suits and bonnets. It´s adorable...even if some of the females aren´t!

I also found a little theatre playing out-of-date films, but the disgruntled owner would have died before letting me take photos of the hundreds of film rolls stacked on both sides of a staircase. He could only get out "Es prohibido....prohibido." And there was a sign saying that going up the stairs was prohibited (prohibido). When I asked if he could make an exception as the owner - explaining that I just thought it was a beautiful image and wanted to take some photos - his reaction was "¡Prohibido...(and then slightly quieter) prohibido!" Although rather ticked off at him, I felt bad for him just because he was so flustered by my presence.