Gardens

Today we visited both the Carlos Thays botanic garden and the Japanese Garden. The botanic garden is free and not terribly large. It features several formal gardens and sort of a random assortment of other collections arranged by division or by continent. The garden is filled with cats that seem friendly and well cared for. We followed a self-guided pamphlet about native trees of Argentina. If you live in the south, you might find the fruits familiar of one tree pictured above - the tree is Phytolacca dioica, relative of pokeweed! There are some impressive trees in the garden. The garden is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year.

From the botanic garden we walked down to the better maintained Japanese Garden. This garden has a modest 5 peso entrance fee. It has a large lake in the center that is criss-crossed with different oriental styled bridges. The lake is filled with huge multi-colored koi. You can buy food to feed them with in the garden so they tend to congregate as you walk across the bridges. There is a large building at one end of the garden with a nice Japanese restaurant that overlooks the garden. We had lunch by the window with a beautiful view of a hillside crowned with a pink-flowered palo borracho tree (Ceiba speciosa). Jake got a fragrant bowl of udon noodle soup with slices of mushrooms and some sort of soy product. I had a good but rather small salad with crispy pieces of salmon over mixed greens.

After the gardens, we walked on over into Recoleta. Along the way we passed quite a few dog walkers out with their many charges. You can see some dogs roaming under another huge tree in a park. We stopped at one of the cafes along the edge of the park in front of the cemetery for coffee and dessert. We each got an enormous slice of a very sweet and rich chocolate cake. Under the ganache topping was a layer of raspberry jam and dulce de leche. We got to talking with a young guy at the table next to ours. He teaches music and bartends in NYC and had come down for spring break. He was enjoying a bottle of chardonnay with his lunch on his last day in the city. He had taken a month of tango lessons before arriving and had gone to milongas nearly every night. He recommended one to us in Palermo where he danced until 9 am one morning.

In the evening we went to an acrobatic tango show outdoors on the rooftop terrace of the Recoleta Cultural Center. 12 acrobats performed to tango music on tightrope, trapeze, a large ring and other equipment. It was really quite striking with impressive feats of strength, flexibility and artistry.