Día 26: Happy Flag Day!

Today was a feriado in Buenos Aires- translation: holidayyy! No school, no work- day off for everyone! Yay! The "holiday" was flag day, although no festivities or events really happened anywhere in the city. I took full advantage of this free day though and spent the whole day doing final things on the "must-do" list with my friends.

First stop: Jardín Japones (the Japanese Gardens). The Japanese Gardens are located just a few blocks down from my host apartment, so my friends and I all met up to walk there together. The gardens were so beautiful! The park itself was very peaceful and quiet- a nice start to the morning. There were lots of Japanese trees and flowers, a tea house, a koi pond, and foot bridges.

Jardin Japones!

Next stop: La Floralis Genérica! The Floralis is a huge metal sculpture located in park just down the road from the Japanese Gardens. The flower sculpture is electronic; the petals open and close each day with the rising/setting of the sun! So cool!

La Floralis

From the Floralis, we went to MALBA: The Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires. MALBA is a contemporary arts museum that highlights Latin American artists. I really enjoyed this museum, especially because it was contemporary and a little more "wild" than the traditional art museums. Lots of beautiful (and bizarre) artwork that I loved!

The colors of this art-piece were projected and moved around the canvas!

After MALBA, we attempted to visit the National Library, but once we finally discovered it, we found out it was closed for the holiday. Oh well, at least we saw it from the outside! It was way smaller than I thought it would be for the National Library, but it was still fun to see a little of it.

Our next stop was the Recoleta Cemetery. We visited this cemetery on our bus tour the first day of the program, but we wanted to go back in order to see Evita Peron's grave. I know it sounds really strange that we wanted to go to a cemetery, but it is such an interesting place! First off, the cemetery is like a city: it has streets, signs, and is laid out in blocks just like a city...and is 14 acres big! It contains thousands of above ground marble mausoleums, elaborately decorated in a wide variety of architectural styles. Evita's grave is hard to find, but my friend Raj had seen it before, so he was able to find it for us after searching for a few minutes. Evita's grave was nice, but nothing too fancy for what you'd expect. It was definitely cool to see though! Also, the joke in Buenos Aires is that the Recoleta Cemetery is the one place on earth where the dead can't rest in peace, because there are bars, clubs, and tourists all around the area! Haha!

Recoleta Cemetery from above!
It's the whole area of tiny buildings in front of the skyscrapers!

At this point, we were getting pretty hungry...well, VERY hungry. We decided to walk downtown BA for lunch, because we were still in Recoleta, the upscale part of town, and figured we could eat cheaper downtown. After a lot of walking, we finally got downtown and chose a restaurant cafe that sounded good. It was a little past 4:00 by the time we ate lunch, so we were sooo excited to eat! It was a really late lunch, but then again, dinner here isn't served until 9:00 ish, so it was not so bad. I had a ham & cheese omelet (Argentinians love ham and cheese everything here!) with fries and water. It was great, but I'm really getting sick of having to pay for water here. I can't wait to go back to the US and be able to drink all the free water I want! Ahh!

After our meal, we walked down Calle Florida, a pedestrian shopping street located downtown. Florida Street is a very touristy area, full of all the clique tourist shops, but it was still fun to look and browse around. Florida Street also has some interesting street performers and musicians, which was enjoyable during our walk!

Once the sun had set, we left Florida Street and walked to the Plaza de Mayo. The Plaza de Mayo is the main square downtown Buenos Aires, where all the government buildings and landmarks are located. At night, the city illuminates the buildings with colored lights, which is really beautiful and fun at the same time. The Casa Rosada (Pink House: the Argentina equivalent of the White House) is lit with pink lights, the National Bank is lit with blue lights, and the May Pyramid (the oldest national monument in the city) is lit with green lights.

Plaza de Mayo at night:
Who knew government buildings could be so fun!

By this time, it was past 7:00 PM and our feet hurt from literally walking across the city all day, so we called it a day and took the subway back home. I'm so happy we had this free day, because I was able to see the remaining things I wanted to see during my Buenos Aires trip. Buenos Aires is such a unique place, and I can't believe I have to leave it in a few days. But... I can't get sad now, because I still have my final exams to take tomorrow. :P Study time for me! Hasta Luego- and Happy Argentinian Flag Day! ;)