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.
