Leaving Mendoza: Pasaje San Martin, Basilica de San Francisco, and Parque General San Martin

Today was my last day in Mendoza. In fact, I’m posting this from my next destination in Argentina, Salta.

My flight out of Mendoza wasn’t until 5:45 in the real part of the day, i.e., late afternoon, rather ungodly early in the morning. Consequently, I had time to see some sights in Mendoza, but not in Salta.

Those sights included two that I would have seen on my first full day here had it not been a national holiday, resulting in them being closed.

The one other sight I saw was a park, Parque General San Martín. One of my guidebooks and my walking tour app both recommend it as a must-see.

Parque General San Martín is open 24 hours a day. So I could have gone there on my first full day in Mendoza, but the weather then was not at all conducive to enjoying a large park. So I chose not to go then.

But the weather god rained its* benevolence upon me today. It was sunny and very mild, almost warm. So, Parque General San Martín, it was. But first, there were those other two sights to see, both of which were much closer to my hotel than Parque General San Martín.

(*My understanding is that the Mendoza weather god’s preferred pronoun is it, and its for the possessive pronoun. As everyone knows, there are thousands of weather gods in the world. They specialize geographically. The lazier ones focus very granularly.

Different weather gods prefer different pronouns. Some use he and his. Others use she and hers. Still others use they and theirs. The preferred pronouns of those weather gods that favour impersonal pronouns, but are in localities with lower education standards, are it and it’s.

None of the weather gods capitalize their pronouns because they all think that’s too pretentious.

I hope I’m right about the Mendoza weather god’s preferred pronouns. Despite operating locally, all of the weather gods are part of a global cabal. If you insult one, they’ll all turn against you. But I shouldn’t have to tell you this. It’s common knowledge.)

One more general comment before leaping into descriptions of the sights. I’m pleased to report that, unlike on the Sunday and then the national holiday of my first day and a half in Mendoza, stores are open, and people go out and about in central Mendoza on non-Sundays and non-holidays.

Because I was out of town on an Andes tour for most of yesterday, a Tuesday and the only other day in which I was based in Mendoza City, I have only one data point with which to make that observation. But I think it’s correct.

Sorry, make that two more general comments. Here’s the second. Because this is my last post about Mendoza, I’ll place a summary of my time based in the city at the end of it.

Pasaje San Martin

Pasaje San Martín (San Martín Gallery) is a one-storey building (a tall storey) in Central Mendoza, built in 1926. I don’t know its original purpose, but it now serves as a small, T-shaped shopping arcade.

The stores in Pasaje San Martín appear low-end and independent.

What makes it worth seeing are the stained glass ceilings in the three sections of the T and its junction. The designs of the stained glass are elegant and understated, with subtle colours. The stained glass in the ceilings of the sections of the T are long rectangles. At the junction, it’s a circle.

The design of the storefronts leans slightly to the dingy side, but not nearly to the point of looking slummy. That makes it sound grim, but that’s not fair. It’s worth a quick visit.

Basilica de San Francisco

Only one of my two guidebooks mentioned Iglesia de San Francisco (Church of San Francisco), and it didn’t rate it as a must-see. My walking tour app not only mentioned it, but gave it a must-see status. It’s all a matter of taste, I guess.

The app called it, “Iglesia de San Francisco (Church of San Francisco)”. A bilingual Spanish/English sign out front called it, “Basílica de San Francisco/San Francisco Basilica.” But my guidebook hedged its bets and called it “Iglesia, Convento y Basilico de San Francisco. It didn’t provide an English translation of that, but Google Translate tells me it means “Church, Convent and Basilica of San Francisco.”

Make up your mind. Is it a church or a basilica? I realize that a basilica defines a class of church edifice, but still, I think they all could have chosen just one and gone with that.

And convent? Maybe there’s an extension of the building out back that’s closed to the public and not visible from the public areas, but I didn’t see any space that looked like a convent.

I’m going to go with the sign out front as being the definitive source. So, Basílica de San Francisco/San Francisco Basilica it is.

But who are they kidding? San Francisco Basilica? I know San Francisco and, while you have your charms, you’re no San Francisco, Mendoza.

Wait? I haven’t told you much about the church or basilica or whatever it is yet, have I? It was built between 1875 and 1893 and was the first church built after an earthquake devastated the city in 1861. It contains an image of the Virgin of Cuyo. Some consider it to be miraculous because it survived a later ruinous earthquake in Mendoza in 1968.

The exterior of the San Francisco Basilica is pretty in pink. I read that it was created in the Rennaisance style. I eagerly await a reader’s confirmation or refutation of that claim.

Another claim to fame of the basilica is a mausoleum that contains the remains of the daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter of General José de San Martin, an Argentinian general and national hero who was instrumental in liberating Argentina from Spain.

All three of the relatives entombed in the mausoleum died in Paris. Their remains were repatriated in 1951.

All that being said, the interior looks rather plain to me, with simple decorations.

Parque General San Martin

The closest point of Parque General San Martin (General San Martin Park) is about a 40-minute walk from the San Francisco Basilica, and walk it, I did. That took me along several Mendoza streets, or rather their sidewalks, that I hadn’t traversed before. All of them, every single one, were as tree-lined as all of the other streets I’d already walked along on this trip. That is to say, they’re intensely tree-lined.

Very nice.

Parque General San Martín is large for an urban park. My guidebook tells me it spans 420 hectares. I didn’t have time to cover even half of it.

From what I saw, it’s quite lovely. There are lots of treed areas, some being loosely packed, while other small sections are dense mini-forests. I also saw a large grassy area that I think is used as an informal sports field. In addition, there’s a gushing fountain in a traffic circle and a few statues.

Oh, and there’s a rose garden. And a lake. And the rose garden is beside the lake.

Unlike the two scraggly rose gardens, one of which I couldn’t get into, in Córdoba’s Sarmiento Park, Parque General San Martín’s rose garden is a real rose garden. Neat rows of a wide variety of rose bushes line the sidewalks and paths of the garden.

Roses of any colour you can name were in bloom. Well, okay, if you can name forest green, that wasn’t represented. Nor azure blue. Not royal purple. Nor …

Come to think of it, don’t bother going through the roster of colours you can name. Most of them didn’t show on the roses at the Parque General San Martin rose garden. Never mind. Forget I said it.

But most of the common rose colours were on display.

There are also a couple of long, peaceful pergolas in the rose garden that add a nice touch.

I’m reasonably certain the lake at Parque General San Martin is manmade. It’s roughly a rectangle that’s not very wide, but it’s probably close to ten times as long as it is wide.

The sides are, for the most part, quite straight, but the ends are curved. Close to one end, there’s a small, treed island with a footbridge to it. I walked over the bridge and sat for a spell on the island.

Oh, speaking of sitting for a spell, Parque General San Martin has a more than adequate supply of benches spread throughout the park. And today, a workday, the park was not busy at midday when I was there. So, then, the number of benches was more than adequate by at least an order of magnitude or two.

Almost all of the benches in Parque General San Martin had back pieces. In a recent post, I forget which one, I mentioned that if I sit for a while on a backless bench, I get a backache. It gradually increases to excruciating. So, I give two thumbs up to benches with backs.

Nevertheless, I have a complaint about the benches in Parque General San Martin, the majority of which are of identical design and dimensions. (Far be it from me to kvetch … more than a few dozen times a day.)

They were all too low.

I have some advice for urban planners or whoever it is who designs and/or acquires furniture for parks, squares, and sidewalks. This is important. If any of them read this journal, they should take notes.

Come to think of it, this is so important that, if you’ll bear with me, I’ll pause while they get and open an electronic or physical notebook.

*waiting*

*waiting*

*waiting*

Ready? Good. Let the note-taking begin. The following is what the height of every public bench in the world should be.

The horizontal portion of the bench should be of a height off the surface on which it rests such that when I sit on it, my shod feet should be able to be flat on the ground with my shins close to vertical and my upper legs close to horizontal.

Any higher and either only the toes of my shoes can rest on the ground tippy-toed, or, worse, my feet dangle, unable to make contact with the ground. Both of those positions are uncomfortable.

If benches are lower than that, it requires too much effort to get out of them. This is particularly true for anyone like me who is risibly past middle age.

There. Is that too difficult to do?

I realize that I’m probably below the population-standard height. So, the above parameters would define a different height bench for most people. But I ask you this. Why does it always have to be about them? Why can’t it always be about me?

I’m willing to be reasonable. Toronto, my hometown, can permanently replace all of its public benches with ones that conform to those specifications. And I’ll provide urban planners elsewhere in the world with my travel itinerary so they can swap out their ridiculous-height benches for appropriate ones while I’m there.

But I must warn them, though. I rarely firm up my travel plans more than three months in advance, and usually less. So they’ll have to be nimble. Is that too much to ask?

Mendoza Summary

What can I say about Mendoza? If I had known early enough in my planning process for this trip that most things are closed in Mendoza on all Sundays and any national holidays, and if I’d known my first full day there, a Monday, was a national holiday, I might have tried to shift the timing of my itinerary to avoid being there on those days.

As it was, I didn’t get to see some sights that looked mildly interesting because I ran out of time when they were open. The Sunday wasn’t a huge problem because I didn’t arrive until mid-afternoon, so just wandering around was a good way to spend time in a city I’d never seen before. And it’s not like absolutely everything was closed.

If I’d known about the holiday Monday after I locked in my itinerary but before I booked my day trips, I probably would have booked the full-day Andes tour for the holiday Monday to get me out of town for the full day when most things were closed anyway. Then, I would have taken the half-day winery tour on the Tuesday, leaving with half a day to see the then-open sights.

Thus, if I’d had fuller knowledge and done better planning, the time I spent in Mendoza would have been adequate, even with the two tours I booked out of town. As it was, I could have used a little more time there.

I’ve said this a couple of times in these pages about Mendoza, but the public squares and the almost-omnipresent trees are a joy. It feels like a city in a forest. If the trees hadn’t been there, I don’t think I would have been at all impressed with most of the then-exposed architecture. But they were there, and it was very pleasing.

There are several mountain tours you can book out of Mendoza. But most of them are full-day trips that start at 7:30 a.m. or earlier. The only one I found that started later was the one I booked, and then was cancelled. A lot of the mountain trips are similar, but there are some different ones you can go on if you’re willing to be an early bird multiple days while you’re in Mendoza. If so, you might want to plan on more time in Mendoza if you go there. (Bespoke private tours are also an option, but the price per person is usually more than I’m willing to spend if I’m not sharing the tour with anyone.)

There are also multiple wine tours. They don’t usually (ever?) start early because, really, wine at 7:30 in the morning? And because there are so many wineries close to the city, the tours don’t have to drive far to get to their destinations. But how many wine tours can you take over a few days? Doctors generally recommend trying to maintain a functioning liver. So, you might not need any more time for wine tours while you’re in Mendoza than what I spent on one.

Some tour companies in Mendoza also offer adventure tours that involve activities with a somewhat higher level of danger. They don’t suit either my age or my lifetime nature, so I didn’t consider any of them. But if they’re your thing, you might want to consider staying another day or two in Mendoza than I did.

In summary, I liked Mendoza, but I can’t say it’s my favourite city of all time. It doesn’t even crack my top ten. I don’t think I would have been bored if I had stayed another day or two, but I also don’t overly regret not doing so.