I came to Buenos Aires prepared to like the city, and I did. What I had heard and read earlier in life predisposed me to expect a city influenced by European culture, one that conformed to my tastes and interests. Buenos Aires with its wide boulevards, many parks and monuments, and its historic opera house went a long way to meet my expectations, but to get there involved a turbulent flight from Santiago over the Andes. Jostled in my seat, I thought of the film Society of the Snow that dramatizes the true story of the young members of a rugby team whose plane crashes in the mountains just below me, one of the world’s toughest environments.
An unwelcome surprise awaited me at the 4-star Carles Hotel in the Buenos Aires’ up-scale Retiro District. Without my credit card that had been hacked and blocked on Easter Island, I could not check in. Kay had reserved my room through Booking.com, but had not been able to prepay it. The solution was to have Kay fill out a form that reception sent to her and have her return it with scans of the front and back of her credit card and one of her passport. It took a while when, finally, I was able to able to have a room. The friendly receptionist upgraded me to one in a corner on the fourth floor, a very comfortable accommodation.
Another surprise awaited me at check-in. It was an envelope containing $100 in Argentinian Pesos. The story is that when Kay told our friend Ilker, who owns our Istanbul coffee shop, the story of the blocked credit card and my consequent lack of funds, he called Ana, an Argentinian woman living in Moda, who in turn called her mother in Buenos Aires and asked her to leave cash for me at my hotel. The line, “I get by with a little help from my friends” has no greater meaning for me than that.
A note about the weather: It was raining when I arrived and continued drizzly and heavily overcast for the next couple of days. The flat light made the city dull. When the skies finally cleared and the sun shown, Buenos Aires looked brilliant.
My first full day was Sunday, a good day for a museum visit as on Monday all would be closed. I chose the National Museum of Fine Arts as my destination. Being cautious about spending my limited cash, I set out on foot to find the museum. Although within walking distance, I made my walk unnecessarily long through a series of bad choices. One took me the wrong way when I mistook a neo-classical university building for the museum.
When I finally did arrive, I was hot and perspiring from being overdressed, and the museum had no cloakroom to leave my things. Despite those mishaps, I enjoyed my visit.
I looked at galleries of Argentinian work before finding some 19th-century European paintings. There were single works by Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Sisley, and quite a few works by Edgar Degas, mostly of ballet dancers. Plus, there was a gallery of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including a version of The Kiss. When it came time to leave, I was tired and didn’t know how to begin my walk back to the hotel. It took me quite a while, and I arrived exhausted. I had to take a second shower before I could lie down and nap.
Monday, April 15th. After breakfast, I chose to walk to the Plaza de Mayo, the big downtown square famous as the place for protests and political celebrations. The fellow at reception marked a route that was simple to follow, albeit quite long. Part of the way, I walked on Florida, the Centro’s liveliest street where men kept wanting to change U.S. currency that I didn’t have.
The Plaza is a large retangle with an obelisk, as its pricipal monument. The Pirámide de Mayo marks Argentina’s independence.
At the far end of the plaza is a large pink edifice called the Casa Rosada from whose central balcony in 1951 Eva Peron famously addressed the masses. That day, I didn’t spend too much time looking around. Feeling tired, I took a few photos and walked back to the hotel. I would return on a prettier day.
It was pleasant to walk through the neighborhood where I was staying. The streets were quiet and contained several galleries, whose windows were fun to look through. Retiro is next to Recoleta, the most upscale of the city’s districts. That evening I walked to La Stampa, a classy Italian restaurant where I was surprised to find the large dining room empty at 7 o’clock. Then, I remembered having been told that Argentinians dine late. My penne with a cream sauce garnished with bits of ham and mushrooms was satisfying. I drank water and a glass of Malbec.
The following day, I decided to husband my cash and do another walking tour, this time to the district of San Telmo. Stephania at reception loaned me a subway card, to which I added 500 pesos, enough to get me to the Independencia stop from where I walked down a street named Estadios Unidos to the San Telmo Mercado . . .
. . . a famous large indoor market covered with a structure of old ironwork that adds to its charm. I was early and some merchants were just setting up their operations. There were fruit and vegetable sellers, butchers, and shops selling grocery items.
There were eating places, too, some of which serving tapas and meat dishes looked yummy.
I continued walking to Plaza Dorrego, a small square that has the distinction of being the oldest in the city. It was originally an 18th-century pit stop for caravans bringing supplies from the pampas to the city. Not much was happening this morning except a bicycle tour group being addressed by a guide. I sat for a while admiring the old trees on the plaza.
I liked all the antique stores lining San Telmo’s streets. They specialized in different things: one sold art glass, another ivory carvings, a third miscellaneous tiny objects. On my way out of the district, I passed Walrus Books, a store that sold only used books in English. Inside, I found several that interested me, however, without my credit card, I didn’t want to use my dwindling cash to buy a book.
When I got to the subway, I thought I was returning by the same train I had taken earlier. Instead, I took another that took me to the end of the line at Retiro, where I wanted to be but at an unfamiliar location. I was in a train staton with a large glass covered train shed.
Outside there were busy boulevards and a beautiful green park with a tall brick clock tower in the shape of London’s Big Ben. I crossed a boulevard and went into a large Sheraton Hotel to find out where I was and how to get where I wanted to go. The English-speaking concierge set me straight, and in a short time I was back at the hotel.
Late in the afternoon, I received a FedEx envelope with my replacement Visa card. After going to the lobby to try in vain to buy an opera ticket on line, I took a taxi to the Theatro Colón and bought my ticket from the box office. I would attend a performance the following evening.
Near where I had eaten the night before, was another fine restaurant called El Mirasol. Even the small steak I ordered was too much for me to finish. It came with fries and a salad of radicchio. I ordered a gin and tonic before and some red wine later. At the end of my meal, the waiter brought me a tiny glass of limoncello. It was lonely eating alone day after day.
April 17th was a big day. In the afternoon, I joined a tour of the Recoleta Cemetery. There were at least twenty-five of us led by a historian named Victoria who spoke English like a native. Recoleta’s was the city’s first public cemetery founded in the early 19th century. Prior to it, the Catholic Church had had a monopoly on funerals and burials. I had never before seen a cemetery where every interment was in a mausoleum. They filled long rows along both sides of paved paths, some of which are quite narrow. Whereas in the beginning, anyone could be buried in Recoleta Cemetery, in time it became only for the rich and well-connected. More than twenty of the country’s former presidents are interred there.
Victoria led us to various tombs with urban legends attached to them. The first contained the remains of a young woman who died in an avanlance in Austria early in the 20th century. Her Italian father comissioned the mausoleum with a life-size sculpture of his daughter and her beloved dog on its front. A story arose that the dog, sensing that its master was dying abroad, sickened and died the same day. Later, it was believed that rubbing the dog’s nose would bring good luck; as a result the dog’s bronze nose is shinny from having been rubbed so many times. Authorities have put up a barrier to protect the sculpture.
A second story concerns a large mausoleum with the busts of a man and wife facing in opposite directions. It was a bad marriage. The wife was a spendthrift while her husband was tight with his money. He made it so she couldn’t shop further. He died first, and with his money she lived it up. It was she who ordered the mausoleum, saying that she wanted sculptures of her husband and herself, but that she didn’t want to look at him even in death.
The mausoleums were of many architectural styles. Some were Gothic and others neo-classical. Some were of no particular style at all. They were decorated in many different ways. Some were bought from families that no longer cared about them and reused by the purchaser with a name change. There is a market for them and brokers who make it their business to sell them. Some mausoleums were abandoned.
Our guide saved the complicated story of Eva Peron’s grave for last. With no mausoleum of her own, her remains were in the tomb of a married sister, another Duarte. When Evita died, political considerations left the question of what to do with her remains undecided. For years they were moved from one place to another and rested for some time in Milan, Italy. Weird!
That evening, I attended a performance of Richard Strauss’ Ariadna en Naxos at the Theatro Colón. The theater is beautiful inside and out, and very large.
I was happy to be there, sharing a box with three others but a long way from the stage. Although I had a clear view, I wished I had had my opera glasses. The Strauss opera is a strange work that begins with a comic prologue followed by acts that are serious. Even though I had read the synopsis, I had trouble following the argument. It was sung in German with supertitles in Spanish that I mostly couldn’t understand. The singing was powerful and effective, as were the direction and effects. It was a performance that the audience seemed to greatly enjoy.
April 18th. Another excellent weather day with lots of sun. I spent most of the morning in the lobby where a helpful woman named Cecelia used my credit card to buy me a plane ticket to Puerto Iguazu in northeast Argentina and two nights at its Mercure Hotel. She used to work at that hotel and used her connection to get me a good rate.
However, before going there, I would make a side trip to Uruguay by ferry operated by the Buquebus Company. Because of a problem with the company’s website, I walked to its office in a high-end shopping mall to buy my ticket. I’m glad I did so because face to face I was able to take advantage of a promotion that saved me 55,000 Pesos or fifty-eight dollars.
A taxi took me to the Eva Peron Museum in the district of Palermo. I have to confess that in Buenos Aires I became fascinated with the life and legend of Eva Duarte, aka Evita. I wonder if it was her early death that has caused the memory of her to endure the way it has. The museum contained outfits she had worn on various occasions.
I watched a clip from one of the black-and-white films she appeared in as a young actress. Other clips showed crowds cheering as she and her husband addressed them. On the walls, were passages from her book The Reason for My Life, and I was pleased that these were translated into English.
The following morning, I returned to Palermo to Malba, the Museo de Arte Latino Americano. It is a beautiful modern building filled with Latin-American art from different countries. The artists with names like Antonio Berni, Agustin Lazo, Loló Soldevilla were ones I didn’t know.
I found much of their work to be of high quality. Each gallery was introduced with a long paragraph of context. The themes of habitation and transformation were prominent. Everything, including the cards identifying artist and title were in both Spanish and English.
From the museum, I walked toward a park called Rosedal that Ana in Istanbul had written about. At its edge was a Japanese Garden that I didn’t enter, having seen others on America’s West Coast and in Japan. I began asking people how to get to Palermo SoHo and learned that it was too far to walk. I took a taxi that dropped me off at Plaza Serrano in the heart of the district.
I sat outside the Macando Bar, sipping a beer and watching the waitstaff and the people around me. It felt good to do nothing strenuous. Although Argentina is famous for its beef, the steak I ordered was not very flavorful. The fries were better.
As the following day was lovely, I returned to the Plaza de Mayo and this time went into the cathedral whose exterior does not look like one. In a side chapel, I found the mausoleum and monument to José de San Martin who, along with Simon Bolivar, was responsible for Argentina’s independence from Spain and also Chile’s after he crossed the Andes.
I also went into the Museo de la Casa Rosada located in a space behind the big pink building. It contains portraits of the country’s many former presidents along with some of their belongings like desks and office furniture. It also has three restored presidential vehicles in fine condition.
Two are horse-drawn carriages, and the third is a 1955 Cadillac convertible limousine that was purchased for the use of Juan Peron and used by his successors. I enjoyed looking at it.
Thinking that I couldn’t leave Buenos Aires without witnessing the tango, I was picked up that evening by the driver of a large bus and taken to where I was given dinner followed by some excellent entertainment. One-hundred-and-fifty of us sat cheek-by-jowl at long tables and were served our choices of appetizer, main course, and dessert. Fortunately, I was seated next to an retired Israeli lawyer from Tel Aviv and his wife opposite. They both spoke good English so, for once, I had someone to talk to while I ate. My meat-filled empanada was the best I’d tasted on this trip. My chicken cutlet was good, too, and came with a sauce said to be a favorite in northern Argentina. I had flan for dessert topped with dulce de leche. Yum!
After eating, a curtain opened at the end of the room, revealing a stage with several musicians who played for three couples tango dancing in turn. They were professional dancers and really put on a show.
The women, whose outfits, which changed two or three times during the evening, were revealing in that their skirts were split allowing them to kick high, showing lots of leg. The movements were very fast. The men led the women in their moves. Not young, these artists had been dancing for a long time. They were great fun to watch.
On my last full day in the city, I took it easy. I had emails to write and my journal to update.
Late in the afternoon, a taxi took me to the Bar de Cao, a place I had read about in the New York Times. Bar de Cao must be one hundred years old. It had the look of a place that had seen a lot of life.
One long wall was lined with glass-fronted compartments, each of which held bottles. Those near the ceiling were dusty and looked very old.
After studying the extensive menu in Spanish, I ordered a Cynar julep and something called the Picaba Cao, a plank with five different kinds of sliced cold meat, including a couple kinds of salami. There were white and green olives and thick slices of some kind of white cheese. Although I had an appetite, I could eat only half of what was in front of me. I took slices from a small loaf of fresh white bread and made a sandwich of cheese and meat that I brought back to my room wrapped in a napkin.
The following afternoon, after thanking the helpful hotel staff, I said goodbye and took a taxi to the Buquebus Terminal where, after passing through Argentinian and Uruguyian immigration, I stood in a long line to board the ferry to Montevideo. The ferry was huge and, although there were many passengers, there was plenty of room. Getting off the boat after the three-hour crossing, I waited in a long queue for a taxi. My wait was not long, though, because the taxis arrived by the dozens. Soon I was checking in at my hotel ready for another adventure.