Recoleta & Palermo (May 3, 2006)

Buenos Aires is a city of 13 million people, and rivals many European cities in beauty because of its colonial architecture, wide boulevards, and lively atmosphere. There are so many neighborhoods to wander around and things to do here. Everywhere we go, were are commenting on the nice buildings, the balconies overflowing with greenery, the huge ornate doors on almost every building. In the week that Lincoln and I are spending here, we just have time to hit the highlights and visit the most popular places. On the agenda for today was Palermo and Recoleta. The neighbourhood of Recoleta is home to the famous Recoleta Cemetary, which is full of ornate tombs rather than actual graves. Argentina´s most affluent personalities are buried here, including Eva Peron. We could have spent hours wandering around admiring all the statues and peering into the eerie tombs. Some were really old, some well kept, and some kinda creepy. I wouldn´t want to have been in there at night!

After the cemetery, we wandered around the corner into a fancy shopping mall lined with restaurants with outdoor patios. We picked the one with the comfiest seats and settled down for a nice, although expensive, meal. We had fun practicing our Spanish because Adam & Andrea weren´t with us. Somehow the waitress thought I had ordered two items off the menu, I don´t know how that happened! After we had all finished our salads, she brought me another dish of ravioli. It looked really good, but I turned it down.

Next we wandered down to the Museo de las Bellas Artes, which had an impressive collection of art. Beside the museum is a huge metal flower that Lincoln thinks it might fold up at night. The flower was built by the South American branch of Lockheed Martin, go figure!

We continued walking to Palermo , via a very nice avenue lined with embassies and gorgeous buildings. Once we got to Palermo , we went the the Japanese Gardens , which were nice but not the greatest Japanese gardens we´ve seen. We walked around the Botanical Gardens on the outside of the fence, and by the time we reached the gate we were tired of walking and didn´t bother walking around inside since we had already seen most of it through the fence. I was expecting gardens with different kinds of flowers, but it was all trees. Very nice, but not much different than the other nice parks around the city. We decided to find a place to sit down and have a drink before catching the subway back to Adam´s. Adam was teaching a student at his house from 7:00 to 8:30 , so to amuse ourselves we wandered around for a while. Checked out the Teatro Colon, which we decided would look better in the day, looked at some silver wedding bands (we want to buy some ¨travel¨ wedding rings because we left our nice ones at home), walked up Avenida de Mayo to Plaza de Congresso, and now we´re in an internet café updating this site.

Adam just lives a couple of blocks from Plaza de Congresso, so it´s a very convenient area to be in, central to the downtown area, and walking distance to many of the neighborhoods. After going back to Adam´s, we waited for Roger to come and meet us, and for Andrea to get home from her classes, before going out for dinner at 11pm. Yikes. We went to Plaza Espana for dinner, which had big portions for a good price, but I made the mistake of not clarifying if the cannelloni had meat in it or not (the menu didn’t indicate it had meat!). It came full of ground beef. Ugh. I ate a little bit of it but left most of the meat on my plate. Adam & Andrea gave me a little bit of their noodle dish too. I was full anyways, so it didn’t matter. My stomach felt like a rock though, with the meat in it. We got home around 1:00 and Adam decided to call Christie. Lincoln also got on the phone with her and talked for a long time, so we didn’t get to bed until after 1:30am , or latest night yet.