Argentina – Day 3 (Tourist Day!)

Today we had a busy day seeing the sights of Buenos Aires. In the morning we walked over to the Malba museum and then to the La Recoleta Cemetery in the afternoon. Along the way we cut through several of BA’s parks that fill a large portion of the northern part of the city. These parks are quite beautiful with their manicured gardens and late 19th century iron and glass greenhouses. The parks are also quite gross. One park, which I dubbed “cat park” was filled with hundreds of stray cats. Although much cleaner than “dog park”, with its vast minefield of dog doo, “cat park” was filled with bird carcasses and strange cat ladies who help nourish the mangy inhabitants.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, BA has a poo problem – not just in its parks. While there are some very conscientious dog owners in BA picking up after their pets, they are far outweighed by the professional dog walkers who allow their clientèle (aka small armies of pooping machines) to do their business wherever they please. But enough about this unfortunate topic. Suffice to say that Meg and I got very good at walking with one eye on the ground and one eye on the sights.

We really enjoyed the Malba museum. It is a smaller museum, which I liked due to my short attention span. The Malba’s collection is primarily Latin American modern art and the current artist on exhibit is Tarsila do Amaral. Admittedly, I am not an art person, so I will spare you my painful attempts to describe the exhibit short of saying it was pretty great. You can check out more of her work by following this link or read up on her here.




From Malba, we wandered over to La Recoleta Cemetery. The cemetery was another utterly surreal experience. This cemetery is the eternal home of the who’s who of Buenos Aires' rich and famous. Those families lucky and old (and wealthy!) enough to have a plot in La Recoleta have erected mini-cathedrals for their generations of family remains. These tombs extend about 7 feet underground and out underneath the sidewalks of the cemetery, and often have rooms big enough to hold elaborate ceremonies and funerals. For those wealthy/important/egotistical Buenos Aires families who didn’t get in early enough to have a plot in La Recoleta, they need to wait until another family sells their plot. This apparently happens from time to time, as families are forced to sell for financial reasons. For the families looking to buy property, the general rule is the same as it is for all real estate: it’s all about location.