Day 2 - A Cemetery as an Architectural Phenomenon

We decided to spend our first full day in the barrio (neighborhood) of Recoleta. Recoleta is of French architecture style and known for its squares, parks, cafes, galleries, restaurants and the aforementioned architecture. It is often referred to as the “Paris of the Americas.” The first thing we noticed when we got to this area was indeed the architecture. We are finding that this city and its people have much more in common with that of the Europeans than of other Latin America countries. Our first stop was the Cafe Monet where we both had a cafe and ham and cheese sandwich.

With food in our bellies, we wandered to La Recoleta Cemetery. La Recoleta is a famous cemetery designed by a French engineer in 1822 and remodeled in 1881 by an Italian architecht. It includes graves of some of the most influential and important Argentinians, including presidents, doctors, artists and wealthy business people. Eva Peron (Evita) is the most well-known person buried in this cemetery.

All of our guidebooks ranked the cemetery at or near the top of their “must see” lists, so we wanted to do this early in our trip to see how a cemetery could be such a great site. It didn’t disappoint as we both rank this as one of the most interesting and beautiful sites we’ve ever been to. The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums. We spent about three hours in the cemetery and snapped over 100 pictures.

After the cemetery, we stayed in the area and went to Buller Brewery. This is the only brewery in Buenos Aires and gaining a lot of popularity. We sat outside on a 75 degree winter day and both ordered the beer sampler with our meals. The sampler consisted of a light lager, hefeweizen, honey beer, oktoberfest, IPA and dry stout. We both agreed the oktoberfest was the best and ordered an additional dollar pint. The food was solid as well - Angela had a nicely prepared caprese salad and I had a chicken panini.

After Buller, we decided to hit the streets to do some shopping and site-seeing. Avenida Alvear and Calle de Presidente Quintana are two parallel streets in the area lined with designer shops, more restaurants and some of the most posh hotels in the city - all in very French-influenced buildings. We stopped into several shops and I made purchases at bensimon and Old Bridge. Along Avenida Alvear, we also stopped into the Rubbers art gallery. Xul Solar, Berni and Spilimbergo are among the artists that have their work here.

To round out our day, we ate dinner at another parilla, this one called Clarks. Again we ordered provoleta for our appetizer and it was even better than the night before. We both ordered steaks but this time we both had the bife de chorizo. The steaks were huge and very good, but we left Clarks knowing still we would eat better steaks as the trip went along. Paired with another great bottle of Malbec, this meal totaled about $50.