It was built in 1932, and although it doesn’t look all that exiting from the outside, the Alvear Palace Hotel is said to be one of the top ten hotels in the world.
It is fabulously beautiful on the inside.
Can it be that she is already 18 years old?
It was beautiful and delicious and certainly memorable.
Happy birthday!
We wish you many more!
The Seguines all agreed that this Sunday conference was the longest one in history.
All of the fans were running and the doors and windows were open, but it was still really warm. The chapel was overflowing with 572 people, many of whom took a moment to express what a great experience it was for them. However, for non-Spanish speakers, it just wasn’t that interesting. Let’s just say that they were more than ready for the snacks that we brought for after the meeting.
After district conference, the missionaries from the zone had a group baptism and 24 people were baptized. It was beautiful to see so many in white, so excited.
We also enjoyed seeing the ancient wooden gears that moved the items in the Customs House.
A trip to the subway on Plaza de Mayo yielded the information that it is no longer running, but may be renovated for tourists to ride on Sundays at some point in the future.
The kids loved exploring on the tall ship named after President Sarmiento.
Jonah and Izzy went for a run on the Puente de la Mujer while the others relaxed for minute.
Doug was supposed to take the blues, aka Jonah and Courtney, to touch the dog’s nose in the Recoleta Cemetery while we walked through the weekend fair. However, on finding it closed they headed for the ice cream store. It was supposed to be a secret, but the evidence was all over Jonah’s face.
We bought some pastries for after church tomorrow and ate dinner at a Mexican food restaurant called Xalapa in Palermo Viejo.
After the cholera and yellow fever epidemics in Buenos Aires, the city officials decided to clean up the water. They built the first water cleaning system in South America, and they decided to house all the tanks and pumps behind the façade of a palace. It is a beautiful Victorian edifice with Royal Dalton ceramics from England adorning the exterior.
Now it houses the Museum of Water and the History of Sanitation, which we found pretty interesting.
We didn’t worry too much about making the daily tour at 11, since it is in Spanish, but when we asked to see the tanks, we were told that they only show them on the tour. Then a few minutes later another gentleman appeared and told me that he would take us on the tour of the tanks if I would translate. (We actually believe that he spoke perfect English because he was approving the translation with head nods and then he himself started throwing in English phrases.) We were really grateful for his effort which made the museum even more interesting for us.
The first floor is a place where local people can go to pay their water bill and the architectural details were really stunning, but the guards didn’t want photos taken there, so I only got the floors.
I mentioned our visit to the museum in my talk on Sunday at district conference. Based on the reaction then, I think this is a little-known museum, but it was a hit with all of us.
Next, we went to the National Museum of Decorative Arts. Originally, it was the custom built house for the Alvear Family. It had something like 44,000 square feet. We saw the first two floors. The lower one had reception rooms and the upper one had their four bedrooms. The top level housed the kitchen and 30 servants quarters, but was unavailable for viewing. Every room was a different style architecture to showcase the owner’s collections in an era appropriate ambiance. The designer was French and never actually came to Buenos Aires.
Tres de Febrero was just across the street, so we stopped off to make the circuit on a custom-built pedaling vehicle.
Back near home, it was time for more ice cream.
We eventually talked the kids into another adventure.
Pretty quickly, however, Tricia noted something else and we had No Idea what it was.
We learned that they are river rats called Coypu. I am not sure how the guy in this picture managed to have nearly his whole body above the water. They were hungry dudes and I found them kind of disgusting, I have to say.
But then Tricia and Carter ran into one of the lagarto overos on the walking path. They said it was like 2 feet long. I might have had a heart attack had I seen it, but Courtney and I were busy checking out some birds nearby.
We did run into another one later and I tried my best to get a photo, but these are speedy dudes.
The kids went home and Tricia and I had a tennis lesson at the Gendemaria which is only a couple of miles away. The kids have been enjoying the nice weather and have managed to get sunburned spending time in the pool.
