Our fourth day in Buenos Aires was a wild contrast that began with the home of Eva Peron and proceeded to the Museo de las Armas Teniente General Pablo Riccheri. We also went to one of the truly unique restaurants in the world, a fusion of Jewish and Argentinian cuisine. It was truly a day of contrasts and fusion in art, food, and history.
We started the day with breakfast at the cute little cafe at the Eva Perón museum. It was actually one of the best meals that we have had. It is a small charming cafe with a garden area. I ordered eggs which were done to perfection. My only disappointment as someone notorious for my bad “Dad puns.” I felt that I had achieved my greatest success when I was asked if I wanted my eggs scrambled or fried. The waiter asked how I wanted my Huevos Argentina and I said “don’t fry for me Argentina.” Crickets. I was robbed.
The museum is small but interesting. The building is very charming with its the beautiful Andalusian patio from 1923. I thought the most interesting displays showed Eva as an actress. There is also a tape of her famous speech from the Pink Palace where she cried on the shoulder of her husband. The movies include Leonardo Favio’s movie Perón, sinfonía del sentimiento (Perón, A Symphony of Feeling).
It will take just an hour or so to go through the museum, but I recommend breakfast at the cafe.
We went from the Perón museum to the Arms museum (yes, both Leslie and I could chose a museum and the results were predictable). As many of you know, I am a military history nut and this was a great find. The building itself is magnificent and located in a wonderful area.
The museum is located on Avenue Santa Fe at 702. We were charged the tourist fee of 150 pesos, which is well worth it. There are 18 rooms packed with various guns, artifacts, swords, and other weaponry, including a room with Japanese weapons. There is little rhythm or reason to the arrangement with guns from the 1700s mixed in with a new .357 Smith and Wesson. However, it is an incredible collection. It contained a number of weapons that I have never seen, including some of the most counter-intuitive designs. Some were hilariously bad designs like a seven foot pike with a gun placed in the middle so you would have to balance the pike with three feet on either end to try to shoot this small caliber weapon. One could image firing up at a horse mounted soldier or a castle wall, but the odds of actually hitting anything (unless the pike was already in the body of the victim) was remote.
The gun collection was from countries from around the world, including some gifts that showed Nazi symbols. There were a great array of machine guns including Gatling and Maxim machine guns. It is the type of eclectic museum that I adore from cane swords to horse gas masks. It was a feast for any military history buff and I could not recommend it enough. Be sure to walk across the street to the park and take in the lovely views and memorials and architecture (including a lovely Art Deco building).
We walked through the city and then went for dinner at one of the hottest and most interesting restaurants in the city, Michiguene. Named for the Yiddish word (meshuggah) for “crazy,” the restaurant is a fusion of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Israeli and Middle Eastern cooking. It is the brainchild of Chef Tomás Kalika and listed as one of the 50 best restaurants in Latin America. It is one of the most interesting meals that I have had in my wife with a symphony of different spices and flavors in every carefully constructed dish. I particularly recommend the cauliflower stake and pastrami (which comes in a solid piece over a thick potato latke). It cannot describe the how different these flavors were, including a beet ice cream dish of borscht that was incredible. The breads were to die for including challah with schmaltz that left you dying for more (which they immediately brought to the table). On some nights they have live Klezmer music, but the atmosphere and food is divine with or without the band. While a tad pricey (though much more affordable with the current exchange rate), this is an experience like none other.
Here are a few of the pictures from the dinner.
A breath of fresh air, this morning. Thank you, Jonathan.
Our ship visited Buenos Aires in 1981 and the memories I made there are still some of my favorites. The people are great, the city was beautiful and I hope that someday I am able to travel there again. We were there training with their navy (just prior to the Falkland war) and some of the officers I had come to know on the General Belgrano were killed when that ship was sunk. Most people do not realize that Argentina was once one of the most prosperous countries in the Americas.
I thought it more than rather peculiar back when Madonna chose to play the part of National Socialist … there’s you wish for the word fascist….when she was such an admirer of the also left wing International Socialists …. also fascist in nature. Thus it was Madonna that got me interested in what at the time seemed an what dichotomy, oxymoron, big mistake and after due diligence research determined national socialists were second spin off from international socialists….and contributed the word fascists to the movement.
No real substantive difference between the two and most of their writings whether from Marx Lenin or Hitler Mussolini were remarkably parallel including the use of fascisms …. small ‘f’ and the ‘what is good for the party etc. or by any and all means possible…. mantra.
The real shock to my then untrained pretend college student mind was finding out the first spin off and one quite intentional which has the same slogan is progressive socalism and from that the means possible, one of them, was to replace the term ‘right’ the seat of Kings from the ‘divien right of kings’ mornarchism itself being a form of religious fascism although progressivism chose to become anti-religion AND the finding the whole thing was used to change the center of poitics and make the national socialists the right of that center and thus a legitimate target in a country such as ours..
In truth and in fact they are the right of the center if the center is the line between the National and International Socialists aka the Progressives.
They are not however the center of USA politics where, and quite obviously that point in a Constitutional Republic is by definition The Constitution. while the entire spectrum of the left from National to international Socialists ranges to varying distances to the left of center. The Progressives following dictates of Plato had placed themselves ads the ruling class of socialism.
How far to the left. It starts where one does not have so much as one toe or fingertip in touch with our Constitutional Center and one therefore makes mockery of themseves when they take the Oath of Office to Constitution. To the right in the old home of the divine right of Kings? For sure the extremists are those who want zero government opposite the sociailst view of a death grip government and beyond including quite often including anarchists.
So what is in the left and right? Just ordinary citizens who believe in varying degrees of government as long it is predominately in touch with The Constitution or Centrists many of whom are ordinary educated, thinking, reasoning, self governing citizens.
In another fact that group was specifically appointed as the well spring of power by the founders due to their definition of those human qualities.
Divine used another way is a term for finding a spring or well as the center of life and that necessary to sustain life. An analogy on thinking and reasoning of course but also why they considered those to the extremes as moochers and looters, those who are more than ocasio-nally found in their ranks.
The real trick for a centrist is to learn true definitions and keep them framed within Constitutional Limits realizing also for one thing none of those beyond the pale can be considered true citizens or as a legitimate source of power. For that…..
For that I give you the Progressives.
And for the rest our thanks to both Plato who rejected the system he created and Aristotle who created the spark that begat the system we eventually inherited
Res Publica Of, By, and For The Citizens
Meanwhile Madonna remains in the Botox Band and the realm of imitative form .. after all which is more pleasing to the ear. Dylan or Rap.
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where’s the obligatory denunciations of fascism from the peanut gallery?
here’s my favorite Spanish military museum
Col Moscardo, you’re not forgotten. Viva Espana!
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g187489-d240460-r423185943-Alcazar_Museo_del_Ejercito-Toledo_Province_of_Toledo_Castile_La_Mancha.
“7 Places to Follow the Dictatorship Footsteps in Buenos Aires”
https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/argentina/articles/7-places-to-follow-the-dictatorship-footsteps-in-buenos-aires/
Plaza de Mayo
The Plaza de Mayo is the city’s central square, located in front of the president’s residence, the Casa Rosada. This was where the mothers of the disappeared gathered in 1977 and began to march in pairs in silent protest against the dictatorship, demanding to know the whereabouts of their children. The mothers of pregnant women became known as the grandmothers, and now the famous organisations of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo is one of the foremost activist groups in Argentina.
The Grandmothers have been conducting a decades-long campaign to find their grandchildren, as their pregnant daughters would have been killed once they gave birth, and their children would have been put up for adoption. It is estimated that between 400 and 500 babies were born to disappeared women, and the Grandmothers established a DNA bank for anyone who questions their real identity. So far, approximately 123 people have been reunited with their birth families through DNA testing.
The mothers and grandmothers still protest every Thursday at 3.30pm, and you will see the iconic symbol of their headscarves painted on the ground in the square. (end of excerpt)
JT:
Love the pics. Particularly impressed with the exquisite cut glass dinnerware. Food sounds good but unless you can dip your bread in left-over red sauce, its seems a little bland to these southern European taste buds.
We have a cruise originating in Bueno Aries come March. We will be spending a few days touring that great city before boarding. Your posts are giving us a great insight. Thank You.