Trip Report 10- Last Day in Town

Fri. Apr. 15 ---- The agenda today was to check out a museum, take a landmark tour and eventually walk back to the hotel so that I would be tired for (and could thus hopefully sleep on) the 11:15 p.m. flight back to America.-------- This morning I took a cab to the Museo Historico Nacional in the San Telmo neighborhood, which is a historical museum about BA and Argentina in general. Some of the exhibit captions were in English, and amongst the inevitable portraits of generals and military figures there are a ton of artifacts, relics and curios (plus a slightly amusing revisionist display relating to the early 1980s war over the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands).---------------- Thereafter I walked up through a non-picturesque, busy street up to the Plaza de Mayo area and had an unremarkable lunch at a businessman-geared cafeteria. Given the warnings about San Telmo (although these are usually restricted to the night) I was kind of nervous to walk on any deserted side streets and, at the price of visual aesthetics, stuck to the larger thoroughfares.---------------------------- After lunch it was on to a tour of Teatro Colon, which is considered to have some of the best acoustics in the world. I had made a reservation for the English-speaking tour, and it lasted a little over an hour. You do get to sit inside the Teatro itself (the architecture can be described as elaborate and sumptuous), which is amazing, plus you go to the extensive basement area, which has rooms for rehearsals, costumes and sets/props. We even got to see dancers rehearsing for an upcoming performance. Very interestingly, part of the basement runs underneath the 20-lane Avenida 9 Julio, and there is a window where you can look up at the street. It's intense to think of all the traffic racing overhead.------------------------- Following the tour I got some empanadas and wandered over to the nearby Galerias Pacifico, a well kept mall in the middle of town. If you go to its lower part there are large wall paintings/murals that make even a quick trek through the mall most worthwhile. Two cortados and then jumped in a cab back to the hotel to wait for my taxi to the airport. Taking in the sights and people on the cab ride back, it really began to hit me just how much I would miss BA. More than just the usual end-of-vacation-imminent-return-to-reality blues, but a deep seated aching to be leaving a place that I really enjoyed and, even more important, in which I felt very comfortable.