This is the gaucho show we missed. Our tour guide sent us a video.
Liz and Melissa and I had a tour of another working neighborhood of Buenos Aires. This house and all the large houses in this neighborhood were owned by the richest of the rich. But when the yellow fever epidemic hit in the early 1900’s, they abandoned their homes and moved to the north of Buenos Aires. This house which housed three people then was taken over by squatters and 4,000 immigrants lived in this house. Now that I’m thinking of it how could that be. Maybe it was 400.
Anyway the original owner had a daughter who wanted to marry a man she loved. the owner owned lions. And on the day of Celebration announcing the engagement… You can see where this is going… The lion ate the fiancé. And from hanging around Buenos Aires I realize people make statues for the sadnesses in their life. The owner had the statues of lions made, that you see here. The girl statue in the cemetery was about somebody who died too early, a widow who had a lot of boyfriends was killed by one of the boyfriends who wanted her exclusively and the parents built an actual Church in her honor. Lots of stories.
This neighborhood had every type of architecture you could think of. In current days they are not allowed to remove the look of the facade. So we walked by a block-long building made of brick with no signage at all. Once you walked around the corner there was a huge sign advertising it was a grocery store. You’re allowed to do anything on the inside as long as the outside looks like it used to.
The woman that lived here was an artist and these are glass mosaics that she made. It’s covering the electric meter.
We saw dog poop everywhere on the sidewalks. . But this explains it. The maximum number of dogs you can walk is 12. But I understand it’s impossible to stop and pick up the poop of these 12 dogs.
Here’s another indication that Argentinians love their pets. Th store was full of dog clothes, dog toys and these groomers.
Now this was an unusual Church. Stained glass was attribute to Saint Lucia and Saint Agatha (Agueda). St Lucia had her eyes poked out because of her religious beliefs and St. Agatha is patron saint of breasts. If you look closely at Agatha she is holding a tray of two pink breasts. Third picture shows the breasts also.
Many many women with breast cancer come to this church to pray for their health and a healthy outcome for their surgeries.
The rich owners of this place were enthralled With Our Lady of Fatima and decided to build an exact replica of what it looks like in Portugal?? France?? I am not sure if they thought Our Lady of Fatima would arrive; or if it was just an homage.
In this country of huge proportions of Christians, we find a beautiful mosque.
The architecture can be completely different from building to building.
This was fun pretending to drink a Matta, their famous coffee drink, from a huge mural on the wall.
Some of the street art was 50 years old and so interesting!
I think there were 48 neighborhoods in the city of Buenos Aires. And someone decided who was the most interesting in each of the boroughs and they would do an wall art of that person which consisted of small pictures of the people who lived in that neighborhood. You can see the woman holding a rose from afar but as you get closer you see they’re made up of pictures of different neighborhood people. And sadly somebody spray-painted graffiti across it.
The story on this church which is not an official Church is that across the street from this church is a park. However, it used to be a huge estate owned by a man and woman who’s only daughter married at a young age and was widowed by 24. She decided not to get married again and had many boyfriends. Apparently one boyfriend wanted to be exclusive and demanded it or he said he would kill her. She refused and he shot her dead.
The parents decided to build a church and name it after her and thus it is called saint Felicity. Because it’s not an official church, after many years, the Catholic Church finally allowed masses to be held but they had rules about how many masses. And weddings etc could not be held there.
The neighborhoods had various parks which they decided to name after countries. Then they decided to let the country know they had a park in their honor and those countries would send money and gifts. Brilliant!
These little storefronts used to be where families lived. They’re tiny but after the yellow fever plague the poor and homeless moved in and called it home.
This neighborhood of the city had been cut in half by this major road. This half was mostly Industrial. I found it interesting they use the space underneath the highway overpass for Sports for the children. The neighborhood had been quite dangerous but things were being cleaned up and it was safe for kids to play.
There was one neighborhood in this Industrial section that housed an artist who decided to paint the front of his house. One neighbor complained ardently about the artist beautifying his home. He said it made all the other homes look tacky. So the artist painted the front of everyone’s home with his artwork.
Sadly the paint all started to peel. It was then the artist decided to mosaic tile the front of the homes to make it permanent. And I couldn’t quit taking pictures of those homes, as you’ll see below
The houses were amazing. The cement building was a factory who refused to let the artist put any mosaic tile on their building. So he figured out what was public property and tiled that. That’s what you see along the sidewalk against the building.
The same artist did this painting down the street and around the corner. If you stood in front of it and looked at the mural the man was not smiling. If you held up your phone as if to take a picture, he was smiling. So cool!
Melissa came on the Buenos Aires neighborhood tour. It was your birthday the next day. We were already on the way home but the rest of the group helped her celebrate her birthday and sang to her.
It’s funny. As as we were leaving her after the neighborhood tour we weren’t going to see her again and Liz asked if she wanted us to sing her happy birthday. She surprised us by saying yes. Liz and I sang Happy Birthday to her in the middle of a beautiful lobby of the hotel.
This is my haul. The only thing I bought was the coffee mug the rest were a little gifts from our tour guide and Sue. (And snacks, of course.)
In 3 weeks I’ll be heading out to my 11th trip of 2025 — eight of which were International. I deserve to be tired!
Next year I’m going to Indonesia, cruise up the amazon, mongolia and to Rwanda to see the gorillas.
Only I still don’t feel old enough to stop traveling……
Send me a comment if you like. I’m the only one who sees them.
Safe travels y’all.
Linda Jeanne