Podworld - Exploring interesting places

It rains in Buenos Aires. Not always but when it does it can be heavy. On such a grey day it seemed appropriate that a visit to a cemetery was planned. No ordinary cemetery though. This is the resting place at Recoleta. I had read about this place before leaving for Argentina. It was where the body of Eva Peron was interned. It is probably fair to say that among the skillful footballers, notorious presidents and celebrated writers, Eva Person is the most famous Argentinian in history. Yet her light shone only briefly. She was the second wife of Juan Peron, helping lead a popular uprising to secure his release from prison and subsequent elections as president. She died soon after at the age of 32. Family Duarte tomb Her infamy and myth was no doubt enhanced by the Lloyd-Webber/Rice musical Evita, later developed into a film starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas. I don't propose to go through her life and times in this blog. More scholarly writers than me have written elega...

It is one of the great capitals of the world with a rich and controversial twentieth century history. Buenos Aires was the launching pad for all of the other journey's made in Argentina. Because of its vastness and diversity, it would not be right to sum it up in a single post. Instead, it will be broken up into episodes with later postings covering other aspects of this great city. Post one here will deal with the central area, what the Americans might describe as downtown. The first impressions of Buenos Aires, once one had negotiated the astonishing traffic chaos, was that despite travelling 13 hours from Europe to get here was that it still felt like a European city. For me, Buenos Aires most resembled Madrid. In terms of layout and architecture the two cities, certainly in the metropolitan areas, felt like twins. With the high number of immigrants from the Iberian peninsular and native language being Spanish, this was not a huge surprise to me. The old Naval buildi...