The family's all crashed at the moment, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to write. This morning, we were in Buenos Aires and the travel (through Montevideo) was fairly rough stuff, despite being air travel, and thus far more convenient than anything currently known to humans. I'm tired, too, but someone had to run errands and (after white-knuckling my way through rush hour...driving in Asuncion is its own special type of hell, one that I could write several pages on) at this point I'm a little too wound-up to sleep. I'll crash tonight, I'm sure.
I hope everyone had a pleasant Easter holiday (for those who celebrate it). It's funny...last year I spent Easter in Seattle, anxiously awaiting the birth of my second child. I mean this literally...my wife's contractions started shortly before Mass, and continued on through the day. Having gone through the birthing process once before, we were able to finish brunch and social festivities before finally heading to the hospital in the evening. Our daughter was born the next day.
This Easter, I attended Mass at the Basilica del Santisimo Sacramento in Buenos Aires...a very beautiful church in a very beautiful city. Aside from the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the fairly sky-high prices for food (and other goods), there's an awful lot to recommend B.A. to folks. I'm really not sure why the Argentines are so loathed by the general South American population. I mean, other than in Paraguay (where folks still remember the war of the Triple Alliance). But loathed they are...and I've heard it said from more than a couple sources that there's a lot of self-loathing that goes on in Argentina as well. Ah, well...something I need to research I guess.
What I do know is that, nice as it is to come home to fresh fruits and reasonable prices (and ants, of course...ants never-fucking-ending), I would have liked to have stayed a few more days in Argentina. There's a lot of history there, a lot of culture, a lot of stuff to see. We hit a few good sights in our four days, but our short explorations only served to open our curiosity...there are depths there to be plumbed, and I'm not talking about learning to tango.
Funny enough, a lot of it was inspirational in a D&D-kind of way, and I found myself drawn more and more to an idea of doing something (or several somethings) based on the sites I saw. I mean, how could you sit in a church sculpted and worked with such tremendous amounts of gold and not wonder how much it would be worth to a party of adventurers? The temples one finds to pillage in your average D&D module don't usually offer more than a couple candlestick holders and some sacramental instruments. A party of 8-10 could probably level up by sacking the Basilica. I'm just saying!
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| That's just the altar. You really have to see the place in person. |
: )
I think BA got plundered by the British in about 1806 IIRC (before Spain switched sides in the Napoleonic wars). No doubt the churches didn't escape their attention. The campaign ended badly for them, mind you, so I expect a fair bit of loot was returned in the end. One of the churches still has some cannon balls in it!
ReplyDelete@ Stu:
ReplyDeleteYeah, I just learned about the war with the Brits this trip...bits of interesting history were just falling out all over the place. It's this kind of thing that made me want to explore more (as usual when I travel).