La Plata

Palacio Municipal
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DAY 68 - 9 FEBRUARY 2008 (SATURDAY)

Constitution Station is near San Juan Subte station but it is a bleak part of town.

Some nice buildings and architecture, but otherwise dull and grey

We got our tickets for La Plata and bought a couple of scones to tide us over for the journey.  The train pulled out and is one of the worst trains we have been on, including India.  It is dirty and the seats are rock hard.

Us in front of the Catedral
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The scenery was also similar to India, poor dilapidated houses, lots of rubbish, graffiti, but we left most of that behind and headed through some countryside.

The train station at La Plata was grimy and dirty but we quickly headed out into the town.  La Plata is famous for being Argentinas only fully planned city (designed in 1882) based on a grid pattern, but when the plazas were put in it caused up to 8 streets going off at angles from each plaza - apparently it is easy to get lost, so I am leaving the navigating to Scott.

The Catedral
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We went to Plaza San Martin and saw Pasaje Dardo Rocha, Palacio de la Legislatura and Casa de Govierno, everything was covered in graffiti and had an air of decay.  SB summed it up as a real struggle town.

We walked down to Plaza Moreno, which was much nicer and the gardens were well kept, however, there was still lots of graffiti.  We saw the Palacio Municipal.  So far all the buildings have been built based on designs by German or Flemish renaissance styles, very out of place considering we aren't in Europe!  The only locally designed building of importance is the Teatro Argentino which looked like an incomplete car park in the lovely colour of concrete.

The standout for the trip was the absolutely huge catedral which was built in 1885 and is very austere with no art etc, but the most beautiful stained glass windows that illuminated the inside of the church when the sun came out - which it didn't much, except for the odd burst, which filled the church with light, but outside it was getting darker.

For lunch we visited the Cerveceria Modelo which became packed especially when it started to rain outside and I mean poured down - we are so glad we decided not to bring our rain ponchos today.  So we settled in for lunch with a lovely bottle of vino blanco.

The rain eased off enough, so we walked back to t