Cathedral

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Cordoba Churches

Many people manage to keep up their blogs on vacation, and I should be able to do that because my blog isn’t commercial. It’s a fun exercise to keep my friends up to date on what’s going on in my lovely life here in Argentina. But somehow last week I didn’t have much time (or, let’s be honest, inclination) to blog. I was more into enjoying dinners out and sightseeing.

Today is Sunday. It’s election day in Argentina, and everything is closed. So it’s a good day to stay home and do some catching up.

The Cathedral, Cordoba

Most South American cities have a lot of beautiful churches, and Cordoba is no exception. Two that I particularly enjoyed were the Cathedral (of course), and the Iglesia del Sagrado Corazon, better known as the Capuchino for its association with the Capuchin order.

  This is the front of the Cathedral, but the most notable feature is the dome. It dominates the area all around the building itself. Even when you can’t see the whole church, you can often see the dome looming above its surroundings.

Even when we went inside the Cabildo, when we looked up, there it was!

I tried to get both the dome and this little cafe in the same shot. In a brilliant piece of branding, it’s called Cafe con Dios! More on that later.

Sagrado Corazon

This is one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen — anywhere. The whole place blew my mind, but particularly the way they have used different colors of stone. I’m not sure my photographic skills show them to advantage, but I hope you can get some idea of it.

 

Like barley sugar twists!

I love this angel!

 

Amazing use of colour in the stonework around the man door

 

Magnificent bronze door

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Salta trip, Day 1

Although I’m back in Buenos Aires now, I do want to post about my fantastic trip to Northern Argentina with my good friend and sidekick Cecilia. There’s a lot to say, so I’ll divide it into sections and include some relevant photos. So here goes with Day 1.

We left Buenos Aires very early in the morning and flew to Salta, the capital of the province of the same name. It’s a fairly bustling city, not particularly beautiful in itself but surrounded by mountains in the distance. I did a couple of sketches, including this one of the cathedral. I love this kind of ice cream pink they use for some of the old colonial buildings! (Sorry about the blue tone — had to take the photo in my kitchen in late afternoon.)

We also went to the High Mountain Museum of Archeology, where we saw those mummies that were discovered high up on the volcano called Llullaillaco in 1999. They were apparently children of noble families who were sacrificed to the mountain by the Incas 500 years ago, and preserved extraordinarily well by the temperature and altitude. I’ve only ever seen pictures of Egyptian mummies in their bandages, but this was totally different. The one they just call The Boy really affected me emotionally. He was apparently about three years old, and he is sitting with his knees bent and his head on them just like a little boy would. But he’s so small! I had to remind myself that this wasn’t a doll or a statue, but once was a real little person. So sad. We couldn’t take photos inside, but I took this one of the postcard I bought.

At night the mood changed, as we had been invited by a friend of a friend of a friend of Cecilia to a “peña” held in a place called La Casona del Molino. People sit at quite big communal tables (although everyone at our table knew each other). Some people bring guitars and other instruments and spontaneously start singing. All the musicians are very respectful of each other’s time and talent. Many of the songs were known to the locals (who made up most of the crowd as I don’t think it’s known to all the tourists) and there was lots of joining in. Quique, the boyfriend of our hostess, was one of the singers and he was great. Most of the music was mountain folkloric music, and one couple even got up and danced chacarera. Fabulous night and a great start to our trip.

Next morning we picked up our rental car early and set off for the first leg of our mountain adventure. Stay tuned.