Thank you Paul Simon for providing the soundtrack to my day.

We got up this morning..er.. this afternoon and decided to wrap up our trip re-visiting some places that we really liked but did not get to spend much time in. We convinced a taxi driver to take us to La Flor, which is an art instillation and the pride of Buenos Aires, and wait while we hopped out. It's a giant metal flower that opens and closes with the sun and tracks it across the sky, just like a real flower. We only drove past it on our tour and Chris wanted to take some pictures so we ran around it in like 15 minutes and shot all the angles we could get. Here's one:



I don't think that picture does it justice. It's really magnificent. It' also really, really big.

After that detour, we headed over to La Cementerio de la Recoleta which is this really awesome cemetery that they have here in the posh section of town. At some point a couple hundred years ago, it became en vogue to do things like the French (the whole city is based on this principle), so they decided to do their places of the dead like them too. It is a beautiful and fascinating place. We managed to spend 3 hours walking around, taking pictures.

The whole place is above ground mausoleums, which vary from really obnoxiously ostentatious to "OMG that's just ridiculous". The whole time I was there, I was humming the Paul Simon song "You can call me Al":

A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World
Maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound
The sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

Here's why:












If you check out the Buenos Aires set, updated just now, there's plenty more where that came from!

We ended our day out with some empenadas, which are pretty much really awesome hot pockets, at a place that the locals really seem to like, so I guess that means we got the good stuff. This dish is a national one, and is a must try if you come to Argentina. They are tasty, even by my standards, and I typically don't like meat that I cannot identify clearly. We have had them in 3 places and they have all been very tasty.

We're now packing up and getting ready to head out to Ushuaia, where it is 15 degrees (I have no idea what that is, but I am guessing 40's) and raining, for 2 days before we get on the boat on Friday. I'm hoping that there is internet there, but in case there is not, don't stress if you do not see updates for 2 weeks. We'll have a million pictures of Penguins wen we get back!