Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Click image for more photos ...

Today we visit the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts). Gord and I take one route on public transit, Kate and Leslie take another path with Uber and do some wool shopping before meeting up with us. Kate brought back some wool for our friend Joan who is kindly cat sitting for us. [Correction: actually it was cotton not wool]

Gord has been taking Spanish lessons near La Recoleta Cemetery (sadly we never got to visit) and has figured out the public transit to get there. We're riding on the crowded bus and I'm getting the usual warnings from kind citizens about "put that camera away, you're going to be robbed" when I realize I've made the cardinal camera mistake — I don't have a memory card in the camera having taken it out to strip the pictures last night! Back in our Balvanera flat I have several cards, but none on me. Fortunately we find a technology store when we get off the bus and are able to get another card. Many thanks for Gord's help there.

There's lots of lovely well tended gardens with epic monuments in this area (I sometimes hear it called Recoleta, it's also known as Barrio Norte). We walk by the British Embassy and at Plaza Mitre there's a grand statue — a Monument to Bartolomé Mitre (a former president 1862-1868). Next door is another green space with a monument to María Eva Duarte de Perón  (of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" fame). On our walk to the gallery there's a number of lesser monuments in other parks including a small bronze bust of Luis Braille (of reading for the blind). Across from the gallery there's the Plaza Francia with a Monumento de Francia a la Argentina (a 1910 gift from France to Argentina). These seem to be from the turn of the last century (or earlier) and the marble sculptures are starting to show signs of wear. I recall in Paris the beautiful sculptures on the Opera House have been moved to the D'Orsay and replaced with replicas; likewise for the David in Florence. They need to do the same here.

Kate and Leslie are already waiting for us at the gallery where we tour the ground floor exhibit. There's lots of Rodin, Monet and other European masters. It's quite an impressive collection but we only sample a bit of the gallery. I liked this gallery and the exhibits far more than the modern art of the MALBA where we visited earlier. Kate like the MALBA more. We visited one of the gallery rooms with impressive Argentine art from the same period.

We have lunch at the La Ferneteria (Bellas Artes) pictured above. It's directly behind the gallery in the Friends of Fine Arts (Amigos del Bellas Artes) building. A very nice restaurant, very busy as well. We are lucky to get seated at the bar and have a very nice lunch with good vegetarian options (again in huge Argentine proportions). There's a nearby conference centre across the street and the restaurant is crowded with folks from some conference. You can see in the picture that the Jacaranda and Bougainvillea are in bloom. It's spring and, in this area, there are lots of beautiful tree lined streets in bloom.

There's more classic public art outside on the grounds and across the street there's the slick shiny modern Floralis Genérica (it looks like a shiny chromed flower) sculpture in the Plaza Naciones Unidas.

We catch a cab on the street in front of the impressive "Facultab de Derecho UBA" (Faculty of Law, University of Buenos Aires) and head home. It's a huge building with a wide stairs and 14 columns. We bumped into a similar "Faculty of Engineering" building on our bus tour the other day. There are quite a few building in this grand classic style around the city.

That evening we order in from a local pizzeria just around the corner — El Español. Actually, we  were going to sit outside but the double layered cheese pizza we chose required a good half hour to make so we had them deliver. 

Finally, in the album, there's some more pictures of the neighborhood streets and Gord and Leslie's flat on Moreno.