People who visit Buenos Aires want to see Casa Rosada, Congress, the Obelisk, the Opera. Me too. But then what?

Maybe to go see the Water Works.

Completed in 1894 and still in use, the formal name of this building is El Palacio de las Aguas Corrientes—The Palace of Running Waters. It's a superb example of late 19th-century British architectural excess.

It occupies an entire city block. It bewilders the eye. It's horrible. It's covered with gewgaws. It's magnificent. I love it.

Here's a travel tip: Never tour a Christian country over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Half of what you want to see is closed. Any schedule of hours posted anywhere will be wrong for the next two weeks. For my visit to the Water Works, this phenomenon would play a big part.

The front entrance to the Palacio is closed and locked. I look for a side entrance, because I heard that it contained a museum.

The side entrance is closed as well. It's a holiday, you see.

No matter. A museum about plumbing! There's no way I'm going to miss touring the place. I'll just come back another day.

I check around the back just in case someone is working who would let me in. There I see this sign.

It basically asks people not to paint graffiti on the building. Some little delinquent promptly scrawled on the sign. But wonder of wonders, the building itself was spared; remarkable as I'll demonstrate in a future post.

I come back the following day. A guard tells me I can't go in because while the building is open, the museum isn't. For some unfathomable reason.

"When will it be open?"

"Tomorrow."

Bear in mind that El Palacio de las Aguas Corrientes is about three miles from my apartment. I'm trying to walk off some of the weight that two steaks a day is putting on me, so I'm trekking the round trip every time. Daytime temperatures are in the high 90s. I'm starting to feel like two attempts to get inside are more than enough.

But then, there's all that plumbing calling to me.

The next day I go back. The forecast says it's going to break 100º. I arrive, dripping sweat. The guard lets me in.

Downstairs feels like the inside of a bank: counters, clerks, velvet ropes marking off queues. Apparently people come here to pay bills or arrange for connections. A sign announces that the museum is upstairs.

I arrive at a small door at the end of a long hall. A placard says "Open from 9 to 1". It's 1:10. The door is closed. Another notice says, "When museum is closed, ring bell".

I ring it hopefully. I hear the clip-clop of high heels striding across a wooden floor. A woman who looks like a research librarian opens the door and peers at me suspiciously over the top of her reading glasses.

"May I come inside?"

"No, No. Certainly not, Señor. The museum is closed. You must come back tomorrow between nine and one. She shuts the door in my face.

I've got way too much invested in this project to give up now. I return the next day at 9:15. The door to the museum is open. I stick my head through the door, tentatively. The research librarian intercepts me and asks where my museum pass is.

"I need a pass?"

She gives me a pitiful look, like she's dealing with someone a little slow. "You must go to the desk at the other end of the hall, and get a pass to enter the museum."

(Remember now, this is a big building. It's a city block from one end of the building to the other. I'm going to have to make a two-block round trip to satisfy the gatekeeping virago.)

At the end of the hall, a pleasant woman wearing a banana republic colonel's uniform welcomes me. Lots of gold braid. Yes, she will give me a pass for the museum. No, there will be no charge. Could she see my passport?

Seasoned travelers know that you never carry your passport while walking the streets. But in Argentina, if you look American, you can't do anything without showing it. So I've been carrying mine with me.

The pleasant officer laboriously copies down all of my passport information into an old-fashioned thick bound ledger. Then she inserts a ratty piece of carbon paper between two forms, and copies all that information again. I surreptitiously glance at my watch. One o'clock is coming ever closer.

At last, she gives me my pass. I airily wave it at the librarian as I walk through the museum entrance. Gooooooaaaaaal!

The first things I see once inside are architectural drawings prepared over a century ago by the British firm that built the place.

This one is for the ceramic coats of arms of Argentina and the city of Buenos Aires that dot the outside of the building.

Further along, I see a desk used by some underappreciated engineer who may have prepared that very drawing. One of my own.

Then I hit pay dirt. A wall of urinals!

The little white vessel on the folding stand is a bidet. The inset shows a flush tank as originally manufactured with a glass front, so you can watch the mechanism work. That is, it you're into hanging around in the bathroom after using it.

The two sink/toilet hybrids with the iron grates are slop sinks.

They're used in hospitals to dispose of... whatever. You don't want to think about slop sinks too much.

One entire room was almost entirely given over to toilets.

The two in front are the "put your feet on the footrests and squat" types. We older Americans have pretty much lost the flexibility and balance to do that. Except maybe for you who practice yoga.

I spend a couple of hours perusing the exhibits. The only other visitors are an elderly German couple who hover over pressure gages and hold intense discussions about them.

Every twenty minutes I hear the clip-clop of high heels. The harridan pokes her head into whatever room I'm in, frowns suspiciously, and clip-clops off again to her lair. Clearly she suspects I'm a potential toilet thief.

Now things get really interesting for engineers: a display of valves and faucets, and a selection of early drain pipe fittings.

I took so many photos of so many interesting things: huge centrifugal pumps, a whole wall of water meters, glass carbon tetrachloride bombs for throwing at fires to extinguish them... I could go on and on.

A couple of interesting posters catch my eye. On the left, a Maxfield Parrish-esque woman in her bathroom. I have no idea what the intended message is.

On the right, we have what looks like a Soviet-era poster of a worker pouring iron. It's publicizing a firm called "Piazza Brothers", a "Society of Limited Responsibility."

Wonderful graphics. I'd hang them in my living room in a heartbeat. Jean would put them out in the garden shed a heartbeat after that.

The best piece of gear is not in the museum itself. It's in the entrance lobby. It contains 21 pressure gages, 21 valves, and atop it all, a wonderful clock with Roman numerals on the face, all housed in mahogany. No plaque explains its original function, but in some ways, it speaks for itself: 19th-century workmanship and technology at its finest.

I raise my camera to photograph it. A guard hustles over and tells me I'm not allowed to take photographs downstairs.

Yeah. Right. After four trips over here in the blistering sun, I'm going to just leave on some guard's say-so?

I consider asking him who could give me permission to photograph the control panel, but it's obvious to me that I would have no difficulty whatever obtaining assent from any reasonable authority. It's not like it's a state secret or anything. So with a clear conscience, I go to the bathroom. When I emerge, the guard has gone around the corner.

Gooooooaaaaaal!