Saying Goodbye to Argentina

It was hard to believe that the final leg of our adventure was over.  Our fourth week was filled with visits to see more sights in the city, although it was quieter thanks to the combination of holiday days and religious celebrations (Easter).

We visited the Palacio Borolo.  This building was built in the 1930's and is filled with symbols related to Dante's Divine Comedy.  At the top of its 22 floors there is a lighthouse...which felt so bizarre as it is in the middle of such a huge city.  We climbed to the top and took advantage of the height to snap some photos.

 

 

Next we took a walk through the Plaza Congesso where there are a number of very lovely statues, with the Congress building dominating the view.

 



 

We also took advantage of a couple of museums including the bicentennial museum and the National History Museum, both giving a retrospective of the very early days of Buenos Aires and of Argentina itself.  We topped off our visits with a trip to Palacio Aguas Corrientes.  This building houses the water tower which served the city for 20 years.  The interior of the building is unremarkable, but the exterior is incredible.  It is clad with tiles produced by Royal Doulton and overall it looks like a palace.  We learned that this is the case because the building was intended to be a showpiece and, as it sits in an upscale neighbourhood, it was made to "blend in" and to reduce the fears of leakage.  In the end it is a huge metal building clad with a beautiful façade.





The museum is devoted to plumbing and water management in general.  The prototypes of various plumbing fixtures are on display:

We also visited The Museum of History which is housed in an old home on beautiful grounds which have been turned into the park at the end of our street...

 

We continued our efforts to visit interesting restaurants...


 

We also visited the places nearby which have become our regular haunts.

We topped off the week with our visit to the symphony in Teatro Colon.  This theatre is enormous, with room for more than 3,000 spectators and we were on the fifth balcony looking down at a huge stage which accommodated the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela including more than 150 musicians under the direction of G. Dudamel.  The orchestra consisted of Venezuelan youths between the ages of 18 and 28 and they were wonderful.  At the end the applause was thunderous and they played 6 encores to everyone's delight.

So, after a trip of over 100 days, all that remained was the packing and the flight home.  This proved to be arduous as we had to get all of our stuff together, say goodbye to Katie and Manuel and take three flights, including one overnight flight back to Ottawa.  In many ways we were looking forward to the familiarity of home, but in others we were sad that our big adventure had come to an end.   However, the next adventure can't begin until this one ended...and we knew that we would soon start our plans for future adventures!