Buenos Aires: buen por el cuerpo, buen por el alma.

So I’ve only been in Argentina for a day, and I’m already in love with it. I don’t want to go back to Uruguay! Don’t get me wrong, Montevideo is great, but Buenos Aires is so pretty – even the narrow sidewalks and buildings that block out the sky. I miss huge expanses of sky sometimes…just one more thing that’s holding me to Texas like a stretched-tight rubber band.

But BA (this is what Wimon and Rosalinda call Buenos Aires, and it never ceases to make me laugh) is lovely, from its glittering, glitzy shopping areas to the green, tree-shaded parks to the colorful La Boca port neighborhood. Today, we took a bus tour, just sketchily going through all the landmark places in BA. We went first to La Recoleta Cemetery, this really incredible place that put me strongly in mind of a vampire city. It was eerily gorgeous; all of the mausoleums were the size of small houses, made entirely of stone and usually topped with some sort of beautiful, elaborate statuary.They were packed cheek by jowl all through the place, and there were “alleys” between them so that people could walk through.

We saw the final resting places of the most famous president of Argentina, who brought free, mandatory public education as well as the first trains to the country, making it the modern nation it is today, and Eva Perón, a.k.a. Evita, the most-loved and most-hated woman in Argentine history, about whom there is now an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. People still leave flowers at both of their graves.

After the goose-bump-inducingly-awesome walk through the cemetery, we went to see the flower of Buenos Aires. It’s this huge metal flower (the largest in the world, although I can’t imagine that there are many contenders for that title) that opens in the morning and closes at night. It’s made of something like 6 tons of metal, and our tour guide said she thought it was becoming the new symbol for BA. Up to now, the most recognizable feature of BA has been the huge obelisk in the middle of Nueve de Julio Avenue, the widest avenue in the world. But lots of cities have obelisks. How many places can claim a six-ton flower that opens and closes in response to the sun?

We wasted a good bit of our morning in the rose garden where we went next. I don’t think we were even supposed to get off the bus there, but people wanted to take pictures, and when this group gets started taking pictures, it’s hard to get them to stop. It was pretty, but we saw flowers that you can see anywhere in the world rather than seeing the Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada, which are completely unique to BA. We did hear an interesting story, though. There’s this really lovely little white bridge in the park that we had to walk over to leave, and our tour guide says that it’s the bridge where all the young men take their girlfriends to propose; if your fella suggests a walk there, you can bet he’s about to pop the question lol.

We had lunch reservations at a fabulous Italian restaurant down the street from our hotel – which is nice, by the way…totally posh – and the food was excellent. No one was able to finish what they ordered, though, because the maniacal waiters stuffed us all full of the most amazing bread first. They just kept bringing baskets of the stuff, and how could we turn down anything so fabulous? I ended up with three chickens-worth of chicken breast and a sack of potatoes-worth of fries in leftovers that I can eat for dinner some night and save some money.

After lunch, we bussed over to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which has both South American and European art – and even a little from the good old U.S. of A.! I saw a lot of beautiful art, just like the name of the museum promised, and I even got a little sketching in. All in all, a good day. 🙂

Now I’m off to dinner. Someone said that a restaurant that served something like Tex-mex had been found. I’m going hunting for it. Wish me luck!

~ by Sara McPherson on February 12, 2009.