Let's see, where were we last? Guess I was dying via snot suffocation. That's basically peaced out of my system, but now I'm refraining from dying by coughing up too many lungs. Better, but not good. Such is life, right? I'm at least happy about getting out of bed again, lol!
Anyway, I guess the best course of action is to start with the pictures. Haven't taken any since the beginning of the week, but I haven't blogged since before that, making this a pretty decent starting point. I do need to bring my camera with me more, just been a bit paranoid about carrying it around. I think there's room in my laptop bag now that I'm not carrying 4 small textbooks, anyway. More on that later, lol.
So there's the via from my balcony in the morning. I'd also like to comment that the university internet is INFINITELY faster the one in my dorm. Taking this opportunity to upload all my photos for this post right now....
...aaaaaand I just discovered that you can upload 5 images at a time. Sweet!!!!
Well anyway, that was my first day of dying from my cold. Like I said, though, getting out of the house always helped out significantly. To the point where I didn't remember I was sick, actually. We decided to explore a bit that day... oh! It was Saturday. Yes, Saturday, definitely.
So before heading out we decided that food was an excellent idea. We found this great little place not too far from the subte that served us some fantastical meals. For my drink, I had no idea what "pomelo" was but remembered hearing it somewhere before (earlier in life, not earlier in the week). Thought I'd give it a shot, but it turned out to be grapefruit juice... mind you, I loathe grapefruit. Lesson well learned, eh? Chirag, on the other hand, had ananá, which he was none too fond of but I loved. (note: at the time we had no idea what they were but having just Google'd it for the sake of the sake of the accented a, it appears to be pineapples. I thought it'd be that because Flight of the Conchords taught me that ananas [with the s] is French for pineapple). Still, the meals were, as I said, pure amazing.
Here are the aforementioned om-noms with a pic of the place:
So from there we proceeded to the subte. While waiting on one of the trains we found this little gem. Untainted, tainted with me chilling out next to it, and then with Chirag doing his patented Chirag photo pose:
So about the trains, actually. Some are very similar to what we've got back in NYC, but then there are these wooden interior/metal exterior ones. Super-nostalgic stuff going on, I liked it a lot.
Anyhow, we ended up in theeeeeeeeee Retiro district? I actually don't recall at the moment, nor does Google reveal anything too quickly. The important thing here is that the subte let us off at the dead center of all the pretty things in that district. It was pretty fantastic in my opinion, but see for yourself...
The last couple of pics are shots of the exterior of La Casa Rosada. To my knowledge, it's the presidential office, and to wikipedia's knowledge is the "official seat of the executive branch" of Argentina. Good stuff. The interior design is pretty breathtaking, especially when you look at all the subtleties that went into it. I organized it all into collages by topics/genres/categories, more or less, so here's what I got for ya.
Here we have some of the rooms in La Casa:
One of the halls had a ton of supersized photos of significant women of Argentina:
Along the same theme, here are some paintings of previous mayors/gov't officials of Argentina:
Similar-esque in theme, here are a bunch of busts:
Right outside the room with the busts there was a pretty snazzy view of the area, Argentine-flag-billowing-in-the-wind included, of course:
Going back in, here's a view of one of the courtyards:
So let's get to the artsier stuff. HERE'S A MAN ON A HORSE THAT WAS MAYBE 100 METERS AWAY FROM LA CASA ROSADA!!!
Sorry, that horse just really excited me, lol. But here are some more statues (inside La Casa, this time):
Vases:
Some paintings inside:
They had some really rockin' Chandeliers, too:
Some of the design aspects (not that I know what I should *actually* be calling these, but I liked them a lot):
And some of the more subtle details that lied within...:
So after that, we figured home needed to happen soon, due to a party that was happening that night. There was still an hour or two left before we really needed to head back, though, so we checked out the cathedral nearby. It had this pretty bamftastic genie-style lamp outside (actually lit with fire):
Inside was absolutely gorgeous. It definitely had some European (I dare say Italian) influence, but maintained a very modern design that resonated well with that more traditional style, I thought. Anywho, the walls had these little alcove-ish things, if that's the right word:
Near the front of the cathedral (by the alter) was pretty awesome, too:
(I'm pretty happy about the light shining on the statue of Mary with the shadow standing so prominently behind her, from an artistic point of view at the least).
The shots of the stained glass windows were a little on the blurry side:
And some other random shots - ceiling piece, floor piece, first statue on the left when you walk in:
So once we left I really liked this tree we passed lol:
Also saw this little bugger:
...in Soviet Argentina, boat is on YOU! (ok, there's nothing soviet about Argentina as far as I can tell, but just let it slide)
One last note on that day (blog of that night is immediately incoming) this guy was way too serious about recording lol. For real, if he wasn't making a documentary on Buenos Aires, he simply has no excuse for how ridiculous his camera is, lol:
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