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Friday, March 18, 2011

Days 21 and 22: Culture in Cordoba

Day 21
An overnight bus brought us to Cordoba, Argentina's second city and cultural centre. Boasting seven universities, the city had a younger vibe than Buenos Aires and was stuffed with art galleries, trendy cafes and 16th century Jesuit architecture. Feeling in a touristy mood we checked out the neo-Gothic church  Parroquia Sagrado Corazon de Jesus de los Capuchinos, "deliberately" built with a missing left steeple "so as to symbolize human imperfection". 


We also visited Cordoba's cathedral which, being built over two centuries from 1577, contains a rather clashing mix of architectural styles (the photo below suggests a greater unity of style than in reality).


We found a rather great pomegranate tree

Then we went to the rather chilling Museo de la Memoria, a torture facility used during Argentina's military dictatorship 30 years ago. The building charted the kidnap and torture of suspected political agitators by telling the victims' personal stories.

That evening we stayed at the hostel for a group dinner of chicken skewers, guacamole and potato salad.


Day 22
Instead of joining the girls for a run today, I decided to check out one of the local gyms. I've been to a few gyms so far on this trip and find them the perfect place to get chatting to 'real' locals as opposed to those who work in the tourist industry. While it appears that the music played in gyms is the same worldwide, the machines alas are not and the locals seemed to enjoy my misguided attempts to use bicep machines for glutes and vice versa.

As the weather was once again perfect, we headed out to a local park for some quality sunbathing and then passed the rest of the afternoon in a museum of modern art  and at a cafe where Josie indulged in some rose petal tea. The accompanying biscuit was perhaps the smallest ever baked (see the yellow blob on the right below). Josie assures me it was delicious though.

Some gnocchi for dinner ...
... and then we headed out to an open-air concert by a Brazilian drumming group called called Olodum, famous both for creating the style of music called Samba Reggae and for starring in Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us". Check out the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNJL6nfu__Q


Tom has a particularly bad cold at the moment. You can take the boy out of England, but ...

As a final thought, the hostel has some particularly romantic toilet freshener.
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