Buenos Aires – We were sitting in a little corner cafe (Manjares, Charcas 2802) having lunch yesterday. For me that meant a reasonably interesting sandwich of bondiola, cheese, hard-boiled egg, lettuce and tomato on pan árabe, which is what passes for pita bread here. For Henry, pollo a la naranja, being a huge fan of duck a l’orange, he decided he couldn’t pass this one up, even if it was chicken. Quite good actually – the sauce pretty much an orange flavored hollandaise, but it still worked. I wasn’t expecting much more, if even that, at a corner cafe. But back to my point, we were sitting in the cafe, and noticed a small museum across the street. [Note: This restaurant has closed.]
The sign said Museo Casa de Ricardo Rojas, and basically stated it was devoted to the investigation of literature. After eating, we walked across the street and entered in to this amazing little courtyard garden. We were informed by the guard, as we wandered, that we were limited to the garden unless we had someone official from the museum with us. Disappointed, as the rest of the house looked like it might be interesting, we started to leave – only to have the guard offer to get us an official. She promptly did, and we ended up on a roughly 40 minute guided tour of this beautiful old house with one of the curators. The house is filled with 20,000+ volumes of primarily Argentine literature and historical works, with some other latin american books mixed in. Much of the original furniture, plus items collected by Sr. Rojas (an early 20th century essayist, poet, and politician), are displayed throughout. There is a large salon where a course was in progress, so we didn’t interrupt – one of the local universities holds seminars and courses on, indeed, the history of literature, in the museum. All-in-all, a great little serendipitous find!
We both had great fun – I think I had more because it was all new for me. Some of it was probably a little too basic for Henry, and some of it he kept trying to switch into dance steps that he already knew. But by the end of an hour and a half, we were moving around the floor with a reasonable amount of grace and agility, albeit in a relatively simple pattern. I believe we’ll be continuing!
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[…] once before, with Henry, back shortly after I came to live here, in October of 2005. I gave it a bare paragraph writeup, no photos, but had liked it, with thoughts to return. Never happened. So, I put it on the schedule […]