Our
day trip to Uruguay turned out to be a long tiring one that saw us crashing out
as soon as we got back to the guesthouse.
Suffice it to say that meant we were up early again ready but enjoyed a
leisurely breakfast and chat with our host Deigo before exploring more of
Buenos Aires. Today’s main focus was to
explore the Recoleta area and instead of pounding the same streets we’d already
walked down we took the underground. The
system actually covers quite a large area of the city but it’s old and the trains
are not particularly frequent. Fine if
you’re not in a hurry but not to be relied upon should you have some sort of
bus or train to catch.
Anyway
we got down at the end of the line, Corrientes, and made our way by foot from
there through a more wealthy area. Our
first port of call was Cementario de la Recoleta that I’m sure you’ve already
worked out is a cemetery. Now we’re not
in the habit of visiting such places but everything that we’d read said this is
a top ‘must see’ in Buenos Aires. In
fact we’ve both seen it on various travel shows and read books where it
features so were curious anyway. It
really is a city for the dead within the living city. The mausoleums and sarcophagi are so very
over the top and ostentatious it beggars belief. As Steve pointed out many of them are bigger
than the average Hong Kong flat! I’m
sure the money it took to build some of them could have been much better spent
but then I’m not on the Argentinian wave length of celebrating death. Apparently festivals over here are more
likely to take place on the anniversary of someone’s death as opposed to their
birth as they were a nobody when they were born. Can’t argue with that logic! We just had to do the tourist thing and hunt
out Eva Peron’s tomb. We did eventually
find it but only on cheating and following a group of tourists that had a tour
guide!
Following
that somewhat morbid start to the day we decided to be culture vultures and
popped into Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes which was free by-the-way. Much of the art on display wasn’t to our
taste but there was a reasonable collection of European artists work from the
late 1800’s – Monet and those boys. Our
guide had promised us some more modern stuff from Kandinsky and Dali but we
couldn’t find them. We’d gambled on the
weather being our friend again today and weren’t disappointed. So we walked towards the Retiro area of town
where we sat in Plaza San Martin having our picnic. From there we; went to have a look at the
very impressive opera house and other fine buildings in the same area, took in
the obelisk – BA’s answer to Cleopatra’s needle and walked back to Elefanta
Rosa.
We’ve
enjoyed Buenos Aires; a city where most of the sights are do-able on foot and
you have to go out of your way to find yourself in a dodgy area. Our lack of Spanish hasn’t been a stumbling
block and most people have tried to help and seem to have appreciated our
attempts at using their language. My
accent is certainly going to be a problem even if / when I get a rudimentary
command of the language! Right it’s time
for me to go and sort out the luggage as we’re up early in the morning to catch
our bus to Cordoba. While I’m doing that
Steve should be putting this on our website and providing you with some
pictures.
