Turns, right and wrong

Of course I do gardens on a Sunday.   The most beautiful in Buenos Aires is the Parque 3 de Febrero in Palermo, an area north of the microcenter (as it is known). It is far from my apartment, so I  decided to brave the public transport. Someone had given me a SUBE card, a magnetic card used for buses and the subway, so I just had to figure out which bus to take. Easy as pie, as my guidebook tells me the numbers and the numbers are written on the bus stops which are everywhere. Not so easy to know exactly where to get off though, but with beginner’s luck I managed to get it right the first time. Spot on, right at the rose garden, called Rosedal, which has 12 000 roses, unfortunately not blooming yet.


A bit of history:  Parque de Febrero was designed by a French landscape architect, Charles Thays, on land that was confiscated from an 18th century dictator, Juan Manual de Rosas. No road, building, garden or anything is named after Rosas, he was so bad, and all his grounds were earmarked for public use. Argentina has survived many dictators and hardships, yet they remain warm-hearted and open. It gave me great pleasure to share hard-earned  public grounds with so many others out on a Sunday stroll, run or picnic.

The next destination was not so easy to find. I was headed for the Jardine Japonés, a Japanese garden not far away, but took a wrong turn and ended up making it véry far. Ugh… Worth the effort through, it was tranquil and full if spring flowers. I had lunch next to flowering strelitsias, felt like home.

The bell in the last picture is sounded every year on 21st September to celebrate World Peace Day.

This is me sitting on the steps of a statue, trying to figure out where the Botanical Gardens are, munching popcorn.


And then more miscalculations and wrong turns… The botanical gardens were closed for some unknown reason, so I took the bus to the graveyard in Recoleta, and went too far, had to walk back a few blocks.  And then réálly made the wrong choice, turning left and walking right around the graveyards before reaching the entrance (which was literally 50m from where I turned left). Beautiful old tombstones, but macabre when you peep in through the windows.

Some have beautiful little chapels inside

A little magic to end my day: as I was walking past one of the alleyways, I heard a voice, and there was a young man bending on one knee, talking through the window of a tomb, pouring his heart out to his ancestors. It touched my heart and suddenly I wished that I too had someone there to communicate with. So I talked to my mother, who loved graveyards – she would have appreciated the beauty of decay.