Miki left us to return to work in Chicago and Elisa headed back to school during the day, so that left me and George to explore the city together. Our first stop was the Recoleta Cemetary, which George dubbed the Beverly Hills of Death. It's where Buenos Aires' deceased elite make their homes, and really is prime real estate, an extravegant city of the dead complete with apartments (moseleums), boulevards, blocks and streetlights. And if a family can't continue to pay rent on their space, they sell it to someone else and move their ancestors out of their marble resting places (to be burried who knows where.) There is a saying here in BsAs that its cheaper to live extravegantly than to die and be burried at Recoleta.
Now Darin would find this ostentatious display of wealth quite disgusting, but George and I prefered to think of the decadence as a tribute, not to those who died, but to the incredibly talented workemen and architects who built this place (none of whom whom would have rated a burial here.)
That interpretation seemed fitting as we made our pilgrimage (with the hordes of the rest of the tourists) to visit the comparatively utilitarian resting place of Evita, chamipion of Argentina's poor and working class. The anniversary of her death (which, strangely, Argentines celebrate instead of celebrating her birth) had been only 2 days before, so the moselum was positvely decked out with flowers. All in all . . . fascinating.
Miki left us to return to work in Chicago and Elisa headed back to school during the day, so that left me and George to explore the city together. Our first stop was the Recoleta Cemetary, which George dubbed the Beverly Hills of Death. It's where Buenos Aires' deceased elite make their homes, and really is prime real estate, an extravegant city of the dead complete with apartments (moseleums), boulevards, blocks and streetlights. And if a family can't continue to pay rent on their space, they sell it to someone else and move their ancestors out of their marble resting places (to be burried who knows where.) There is a saying here in BsAs that its cheaper to live extravegantly than to die and be burried at Recoleta.
Now Darin would find this ostentatious display of wealth quite disgusting, but George and I prefered to think of the decadence as a tribute, not to those who died, but to the incredibly talented workemen and architects who built this place (none of whom whom would have rated a burial here.)
That interpretation seemed fitting as we made our pilgrimage (with the hordes of the rest of the tourists) to visit the comparatively utilitarian resting place of Evita, chamipion of Argentina's poor and working class. The anniversary of her death (which, strangely, Argentines celebrate instead of celebrating her birth) had been only 2 days before, so the moselum was positvely decked out with flowers. All in all . . . fascinating.
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