Buenos Aires at random

To finally finish off my posts on the supremely photogenic Buenos Aires, here is a pile of pictures of cool things that didn't get their own blog entries.

The malbec. Oooohh, the malbec. Even in a plastic cup from the hostel
kitchen it is hands-down my favorite wine (sorry, Chilean carmenere. You're
pretty, too). Malbec is available absolutely every place that sells wine in
Argentina, yet it's a bit hard to find in Chile. Border battle?

The west end of Plaza de Mayo

El Pensador– one of several casts made from Rodin's original mold.
A few years ago, creative vandals turned him into the Pink Thinker.

Oro! Oro! Oro! Cambio! Cambio! Cambio!
Sure signs of their shaky economy were the solid city blocks of
gold buyers, as well as street hawkers offering to exchange
foreign currency at better-than-official rates.

An obelisk. And a Pepsi ball.

Books at last! Whereas Chile has few bookstores and everything is crazy
expensive, BA has stacks of new and used options every way you turn.

One of our coolest tours was El Zanjón, a rediscovered historical site
with literally layers of history going down almost 500 years. This Roman-
style cistern is from the 1830 mansion on the site.

A quiet street, a city worker, and a whole bunch of...something.

Cool reflection

Sobering remains of the Israeli embassy that was bombed in 1992,
outlined on the neighboring building.

Big, cool tree. It's a gomero, or ficus macrophylla– I had no idea any kind of ficus got this huge!

Random plastic bottle art or effigy? In this city, flip a coin.

It's hard to capture from street level, but Avenida 9 de Junio is really, really wide.
You're lucky to cross in two light cycles.

Casa Rosada (the Pink House) and the balcony where Evita did her thing.

We didn't cry for her. She asked us not to, and we didn't.

The family crypt where Eva Perón is buried. Her body
went through almost as much tribulation at Haydn's did
(that's another story) before finally resting here,
in a theft-proof fallout-proof underground bunker.

Crypt of a teenage girl who died twice: once when her
family thought she was dead and buried her, again when
she actually died inside the coffin. *shudder*

Casa Minima: the narrowest house in BA. Legend has it that this was originally
part of a larger house and was given to a freed slave by his former owner.
I'm torn between "Wow, that was generous for the time," and "Wow, way to
visually represent racial inequity."

Avenida Florida by night.

To the vanishing point

Studying perspective in art or photography? Visit Buenos Aires! Something about it makes you want to capture the city on film/paper as it stretches neatly towards the horizon-- thank you, modern city planning-- while it also breaks up the straight lines with endless neoclassical details carved or built into the buildings.

Here's my layman's guide to How To Plan Cities and Use Lots of Perspective:

Find an obelisk and aim for it!

Reverse it!

Church it!

Top it with some dudes and a bell!

Walk it!

Elevate it!

Pair old and new with it!

Reflect it!

Cobblestone it!

Randomly arch it!

Plant it!

Reverse upward selfie it!

Teatro Colón

Teatro Colón is a gorgeous theater with near-perfect acoustics that practically screams "Look! Even though we live in South America we are European! And rich and classy!" When it opened in 1908 I think a lot of rich locals actually were screaming that, or they would have been if screaming weren't so gauche. They only thing they didn't gild in here was Beethoven (and Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, etc.).

I don't have more to say about it that isn't also invented, so here! Look at pretty pictures!

Middle Finger Plaza

We took a walking tour of the Recoleta area in Buenos Aires that included a memorial to the Argentinians who died in the Falklands War. In case this corner of 20th-century history is rusty for you, the Falkland Islands, or Las Malvinas to folks around here, is a small archipelago off the coast of Argentina that's been controlled by the UK since 1830 or so. In 1982 Argentina's military dictatorship decided to retake the islands to drum up popular support. After about 3 months the Brits won, and not long afterward the dictatorship fell. Most Argentinians seem to agree that the government that started the war was sketchy and responsible for the disappearance of somewhere between 20,000–30,000 people. However, many are still very bitter and vocal about the war itself and the UK's continued control of the islands.

So now you see why it's funny that this memorial:

is overlooked by this memorial (in the far center):

It's hard to tell in my photo, but that is an intergovernmental-gift-sized replica of Big Ben. Like from England. Given long before the conflict, but still–kind of funny.

Also from the same plaza you can see this tall and very modern-looking building. 

See that green dome peeking out from behind it on the left? That's a lovely neoclassical church that used to be visible from the palacio (mansion) of a rich and powerful old-money family across the park. They basically paid to build it and considered it their family chapel. Then the old-money son broke off his engagement to a new-money girl because his mama disapproved of the nouveau riche. When the new-money mama built her tall, starkly modern, decidedly un-neo-anything building, whose view do you suppose she decided to block?

Those two pointy-in-the-middle structures and their stories are why we have dubbed this park Middle Finger Plaza.