Saturday, July 9, 2011

Being a tourist.

It's been good.


In my first week here I went on a walking tour of the city. Look at these buildings! They look so old and permanent.


This is Teo the tour guide. He informed us that Argentines have no morals and graffiti all over everything and that's why they have fences around all their national monuments. 


This is the Plaza de Mayo. There is a lot of protesting here. 


The white shawls of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, painted on the ground.


It was very cold, but pretty and bright.


This is the Casa Rosada. The president, currently Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, hangs out here and works. Or "works," as Teo the tour guide said. The congress "works" somewhere else.

You may notice that it's pink. This is apparently not weird. At night they light it up and it's even pinker.


This is the obelisk. It hangs out in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio. When people get excited about soccer they come here and go crazy and graffiti on everything. Teo the tour guide was very insistent that Argentines have no morals.

This is the Metropolitan Cathedral, which is also in the Plaza de Mayo. It doesn't look very cathedral-y from the outside.


Off to one side is the mausoleum of General José de San Martín. Apparently he was actually a Mason, so they had to put it kind of outside of the actual church part.


The tile floor was pretty.


More pretty.


Another day, I walked over to the Puente de la Mujer, a bridge by Santiago Calatrava that looks very similar to the Sundial Bridge in Redding. It's not a sundial, but it does apparently pivot out to allow boat traffic to pass through.


I also went to this floating museum! It's the Fragata Sarmiento, and it has been around the world many times. It went to San Francisco three times. You can see where the cadets had classes and stuff. It was cool.


More to come. Oh, so much more.

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