till a bit tired from our trip, we slept almost 9 hours. Breakfast was on the very top of the hotel, which it turns out is half hotel, half condos. Stunning views over the whole of the city were really beautiful, and we plotted out our day.
Still determined to add value to our Subte card, we walked to the Plaza de Mayo station, and once again failed. Without value on the card, we could not take the bus which went directly to the museum, alas. So off to the Catedral station, and a quick look around this Baroque-style cathedral, like so many we had seen in Europe. One major attraction was the tomb of Jose de San Martin, who liberated South America from Spanish colonial rule. The side chapel where he was buried was crowded with small tour groups all snapping selfies, and I wondered if they know who he was. Interestingly, there was no place to light a candle anywhere in the church, perhaps fear of fire? In any case, we went back to the Subte station and headed for our destination, which took only one transfer and a nice walk through a park to the Museum.
The Museo Nacional des Belles Artes is the main museum here, with historical collections ranging from pre-Hispanic to Impressionist (there are also two contemporary arts museums). We enjoyed the small but lovely collection of Impressionists and a post-Impressionists, a nice Medieval collection, and a number of works ranging from El Greco to Dutch still lifes to Bougereau, the collection had a lot of French pieces donated by wealthy Argentinians who were Francophiles, in reaction to their earlier Spanish colonial overlords. Our visit was fairly short as we had to back to the hotel, so we only scratched the surface.
At 2:00pm, the Nat Geo folks arranged for a short city tour and visits. We went to El Zanjan, a museum built over the former tunnels which culverted the main creeks in the early colony. The tunnels were about 10 feet high, and each family in what was then a wealthy area built their own tunnel underneath their homes, which kept the sewage and garbage from affecting their lives. Later the wealthy moved and the grand homes became tenements, with 24 families living in what was once the home of a single wealthy family. It was discovered by a man who bought an old building in the 1980s, found it wrecked inside and floors collapsing, revealing the former tunnels beneath. He spent two decades restoring it, and it became a major archaeological site of 18th and 19th century life. The we went to the Recoleta Cemetery, site of the grave of Eva Peron, whose embalmed remains were brought here decades after she died and after her husband returned to Argentina after exile. The narrow alley leading to her family mausoleum was jammed with tourists all taking the requisite photo. I enjoyed walking the other alleys between the monumental tombs, rather like the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, but with no greenery or tombstones, only mausoleums. Many had plaques describing the background of the person who first purchased a plot there.
The day was hot and humid, around 90°, it felt so much like Miami in summer, so we’re grateful to get back to the hotel and the air conditioning. We repacked out suitcases to be picked up that evening. A welcome reception was held in the downstairs of the hotel, and we met several nice shipmates, and learned about the plans for the next day. Probably half of the on board were American, maybe 60%, with the rest being Australian, German, Canadian, and a few other South Americans, so conversations and presentations were all in English.
Rather like the 5am flight to Abu Simbel in Egypt, we had to get up very early the next day for our flight to Ushuaia, so we headed to bed early with multiple alarms set.
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