Last Day in Mendoza

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Revived after a fairly relaxing day (and a great dinner), we woke up early on our last day in Mendoza.  It was still pretty chilly, but not quite as windy as it had been the day before.  Since this would be our last opportunity to savor the free breakfast at the hotel, we took our time and enjoyed as much as possible.  Plus, it was still cold enough out to encourage us to stay within the warm confines of the hotel a bit longer.  We used the time to talk about--what else--girly stuff!  Well, as girly as either Mom or I can get, which amounted to more wedding ideas.  Now that we had the dress, we had to figure out accessories!  The most important accessory, of course, is shoes.  And if you haven't noticed (I may have even mentioned it a couple posts back), I sincerely despise shoes.  We purposely had the dress fitted so that I can wear no shoes if I want.  However, it is generally recommendable to wear something on your feet if you're going hiking, so I'll probably have to come up with something, at least to wear after the ceremony.  After buying the Toms-like shoes and talking to Jaimee (who has a slight obsession with Toms shoes) a couple days before, we thought that style would be a good option.  Mom is really crafty, so she offered to jazz up a pair for me.  We'll see what transpires between now and next summer, but as of breakfast, we'd settled on some shiny pink shoes with white lace.  That's bridal, right?  As bridal as you're going to get from me!

As you can see, I (and Mom) have kind of been taking over the wedding planning without giving much input to Scott.  I haven't really had much of an opportunity to talk to him since he went to England, because he still doesn't have internet at his house, and it costs 25¢ per minute to call his cell phone from Skype.  I'd already used up more than my monthly phone allowance calling him, so I was pretty much resigned to waiting another month until he finally gets internet at the end of October.  However, Mom was nice enough to top up my Skype credit so that I could call him a little more.  Her donation allows for 400 minutes, which seems like a lot, but spread out over a month runs dry pretty quickly!  We've still got 20 more days of non-internet, and we're already having to ration pretty strictly.  Anyways, the point is that I did get to talk to him from Mendoza, and it was awesome.  I told him about some of our ideas for the wedding (leaving out the specifics of the dress), and he said he'd be OK with anything I wanted to do as long as we were married in the end.  He did have one request, however, and that was regarding the cake.

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Scott's favorite season is autumn, and probably the only reason we're not getting married in the fall is because of the school schedule.  To go along with his appreciation of the season comes his admiration for the colors its produces, particularly orange.  We talked about mixing our two favorite colors--orange and purple--but the hue of my spontaneously-bought dress made this plan difficult.   Strange that purple and orange can be combined well, but pink and orange rarely work.  I'm not sure why this is, but I'm sure if I ask my design students they can enlighten me!  They were getting very frustrated when I made them do an exercise arranging sentences by the color I had shaded each word.  They were annoyed not because the exercise was difficult, but because I labeled the colors as "blue" instead of "cyan" and "pink" instead of "magenta."  So maybe we're mistaken and Scott's favorite color isn't orange, but perhaps auburn or even amber!  Either way, he is adamant about somehow incorporating this into the wedding, and is determined that the cake will be autumn-themed regardless of the actual season at the time of the wedding.  That's fine with me; I never really was into matching anyways.  My main concern is figuring out how to get a cake from The Little Aussie Bakery.  If you've never gotten the chance to try one of their cakes, you haven't truly eaten cake.

Anyways, after much coffee and wedding planning, Mom and I decided we were ready to tackle the day.  In all our days in Mendoza, we still hadn't gotten the opportunity to check out any of the museums.  There were a couple close to our hotel, but we were feeling adventurous and decided to try out one that the information officer had pointed out to me yesterday.  It was a bit of a hike, but it was built right on top on the center of the "old" city, so was sure to have a lot of history.  We had a map of the city, but after our experience trying to use a map to navigate the park, we were slightly hesitant to trust it.  Nonetheless, we headed off to the north, encouraged by the few rays of sunshine poking through the clouds.  Our plan was to head straight north until we came to the street on which the museum was located, then go east until we reached it.

We walked for quite a while, just enjoying the nice weather.  It was slightly chilly, but there was no wind and the bits of sunshine that broke through the clouds made it a perfect day for a walk.  We walked in silence, admiring the architecture and the slow pace of the people in the city.  We'd nearly reached the street where we were supposed to turn, but saw a big hill just a few blocks more to the north and decided it was worth the detour to investigate.  Turns out that was the corner of the Parque Central, a smaller but nonetheless impressive city park.  This park is also much newer--it was built in 2003.  We managed to walk the entire thing without getting lost once!  It helped that it was landscaped and heavily manicured, but we were proud of ourselves anyway.  We walked past a large mosaic and through the playground and stopped to watch a toddler chase the pigeons.  She actually managed to sneak up and grab one while he snacked on a piece of bread left on the ground!  I think she was more frightened by that development than he was!

We also stopped to admire some of the sculptures scattered throughout the park (while at the same time attempting to avert our eyes from the dozens of young lovers admiring one another).  Most of the artwork is what would generally be considered "modern art," and neither of us are big fans of that, so after a few minutes we decided to continue on our way to the history museum.  We passed under a highway bridge to get to the other side of the street, and came to the conclusion that we enjoyed the graffiti there much better than the official artwork in the park.  What can I say?  We have expensive taste.

After a brief detour down the wrong street, we were once again on track towards the museum.  As we approached our destination, the architecture began to change noticeably.  Not that the buildings downtown were skyscrapers, but they were fairly tall.  Out in the "old" city, it became mostly residential, and even the commercial buildings were smaller and less ostentatious. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is because this is the area that is considered the "original" Mendoza.  Before the earthquake, this area was filled with beautiful, traditional houses and was the commercial center for the city.  When the earthquake hit, everything was destroyed and the citizens could no longer bear to see the reminders of the former glory of their crippled city.  For many years, that section of town was completely ignored and became a place for homeless and vagabonds.  Eventually, the area became such a detriment to the town's safety that it was eventually rebuilt, but never to the same degree of elegance that it had originally.

Despite the citizen's reluctance to rebuild the area, they did a very nice job.  After walking quite a while through pretty boring streets, we came upon a beautiful plaza full of flowers and monuments.  If any of you are familiar with the layout of Spanish colonial cities, you may have been surprised to learn in previous entries that the main plaza of Mendoza is Plaza Independencia.  It is typical of Spanish colonial towns to be centered around a main plaza called "Plaza de Armas."  This is because the majority of these cities were founded to serve military purposes, so the main plaza was the place around which weapons (armas) were stored.  Usually the military leaders had the privilege of living the closest to this plaza, while those of lower social classes were forced to live further away.  Even today, when the military is not as prevalent (and if it is, tends not to be located right in the center of town), most colonial cities are still centered around their original "Plaza de Armas."  So, the plaza we came to here in Mendoza was the original Plaza de Armas that was destroyed with everything else in the city in the 1861 earthquake.  When the city was rebuilt, the main plaza was moved westward and given a different name.  Even to this day, there is no Plaza de Armas in Mendoza (although many tourists mistakenly give that name to Plaza Independencia, accustomed to the traditional layout of Spanish colonies).  The plaza we came to is now called Plaza Pedro de Castillo, after the founder of the city

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At the far end of the original Plaza de Armas, next to Rio Mendoza (which actually turned out not to be a river at all, but instead an irrigation ditch dug by the Huarpes), stood the original cabildo (colonial government building).  It had been destroyed by the earthquake and nearly forgotten for many years.  In fact, a new fruit and vegetable fair was built on top of the former seat of government and life continued.  It wasn't until the late 1980s when archaeologists studying old maps realized the importance of the land underneath the fair.  They began to excavate and uncovered some of the original plaza.  Most importantly, they discovered a very well-preserved shell of the cabildo, protected over the years by the very thing that had been set up to forget it.  Excavations intensified to discover as much as possible about the history of their beloved city.  A foundation was even set up to preserve the discoveries.  Finally, in 1993, the Museo del Área Fundacional was erected directly on top of the old cabildo.

Now, before all my archaeologist friends get all nervous, don't worry.  Excavations are ongoing, so there is usually an archaeologist present to ensure the integrity of the site.  Of course, all objects were mapped and photographed in-situ before being removed for conservation and eventual exhibition at the museum.  The more fragile parts of the cabildo are visible only through a glass floor.  The other parts are visible but access is restricted.  While you can't actually go right into the cabildo, you can stand right above it and imagine its glory in years past.  The museum displays objects and information about the history of the area from Pre-Colombian times through to the present.  It's not a very large museum, but I was surprised at how in-depth the history was!  I've already given the basics of it in a previous post, so I won't go through it again.  The part that I enjoyed the most was the first-hand accounts given about many historic events throughout the history of Mendoza.  As I reach each story, I could almost imagine myself living the life of each individual throughout time.  In the end, I decided I was very glad to live in my own time period.

After perusing the museum for probably way too long (anyone who has ever been to one with me knows that I have to read every single panel about every single object), we were starting to get hungry.  It was quite a ways back to our hotel, but we figured we'd go part of the way and find a restaurant to have some dinner and restore our energy.  Mom took a quick smoke break before we started off, and I took the time to admire the statues in front of the museum.  I hadn't noticed before, but there was one story for each different era in the history of the city, and a quote underneath from a notable person from that era.  Of course, I had to take a picture of all of them.  If you want to see, check out the album on my Facebook page.  For now, you'll just have to be satisfied with  my favorite.  After admiring the artwork, we started off back towards downtown.  Of course, after a couple hours inside the museum while the weather was perfectly sunny, it started to rain as soon as we began walking.  Luckily, we made it fairly quickly to Avenida San Martin, a large street filled with shops.  Most of them had awnings, so we stuck close to the buildings, trying to stay as dry as possible.  Strangely, we weren't having much luck finding any place to eat, so we continued on.  At one point, the rain started to come down in a downpour, so we waited it out inside a discount store.  Full of imported and imitation goods, it reminded me of the dollar store.  Oh, home sweet home!

Luckily, the rain let up fairly quickly and were able to continue our search for sustenance.  We still didn't see many options, but kept telling ourselves it would be only on the next block.  About 10 "next blocks" later, we'd arrived back to Peatonal Sarmiento, the pedestrian street that we'd shopped on many times in the past few days.  Surely there would be something here!  There was actually a really delicious-looking restaurant right on the first corner, but when we got closer to investigate, it turned out they were closed.  At this point we were getting so desperate that we nearly just went to the McDonald's at the end of the block, but decided to give it one more try.  Good thing we did, too, because we came across a great restaurant!  Since this would be our last meal in Mendoza, we ordered one last bottle of wine and decided to try one more new type of meat.  We weren't quite as adventurous as day one, but we did order some grilled goat, just to round off our list of exotic meat.  I enjoyed it, although Mom wasn't a big fan.  It was heavily seasoned with rosemary, which reminds me of the food at The Little Aussie, so that may have been part of the reason I enjoyed it so much!  In the end we were glad we tried it, even if it didn't turn out to be our favorite.

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After dinner, we went back to the hotel to pack up for our early departure the next day.  We still had to go pick up my dress, but were told it wouldn't be ready until after 8:00, so we used the time to organize our souvenirs and to just relax after the long day.  Finally, at about 7:45, we headed out to retrieve the dress.  When we got to the store, we were disappointed that Monica wasn't there (she was on business in Buenos Aires).  The saleswoman showed us the modifications that had been made, and took me into the dressing room to try it on one more time.  We had a bit of a scare when they couldn't get the zipper up, but rubbing it with a bar of soap fixed that.  Good motivation not to gain weight, I guess!  I modeled the dress one more time in front of the mirrors, and felt reassured that I still felt like a princess.  The seamstress pulled out a shawl and showed Mom how she could tie it behind me so that it wouldn't fall off.  She took some pictures so that she wouldn't forget in the 10 months before the wedding.  The saleswoman packed everything up into the garment bag and we were on our way.  We had a slight delay when we set off the alarm system and realized that they'd forgotten to remove the device from the skirt of the dress, but that problem was resolved quickly.

I felt a little strange walking through downtown carrying a huge dress above my head, but the awkwardness was overshadowed by my excitement to wear the dress.  Back at the hotel, we carefully packed it up in the suitcase we had bought especially for it.  We did some last-minute preparations, asked for a wake-up call, and headed to bed.  The trip back to Santiago the next day was much easier than the trip to Mendoza!  We were very glad for that; our trip sure had tired us out!