24 April 2010 - Eating, drinking and sleeping like royalty

Mendoza turned out to be quite a treat. Firstly our accommodation was a family run B&B rather than the usual hostel fare and secondly it was Lisa's birthday whilst we were in town which meant that we could take our eyes off the budget for a little while. The next few days included:

• A delicious meal for Lisa's birthday made up of a huge pork steak, morcilla (blood sausage) and chorizo as well as an excellent bottle of red;
• A full day touring the vineyards of the region including wine tastings at three vineyards and an enormous Jacobean banquet of a lunch;
• A day recovering from earlier excesses in the wonderful and enormous public park in town.

It was excellent to take our first adventures in wine tasting (especially having previously passed up the opportunity in Napa, California) and it thoroughly lived up to my expectations as our driver took us down dusty roads to huge wineries where we nodded patiently through explanations of the wine making process anxious to get our hands on a glass of the good stuff. And good stuff it was, I'll definitely be searching out Mendoza Malbec when we come back to the UK.

The journey out of Mendoza was in style. Having endured some nasty journeys on our travels so far we decided that for the overnight bus to Rosario we would push the boat out. So we ignored the semi-cama (literally 'half-bed') class of bus and its upmarket cousin cama ejecutivo and went right in at the top - we were travelling royal suite. This involved sitting on huge leather armchair-like seats, eating an inordinately large three course meal, drinking a glass of wine with dinner and then champagne as a digestif, enjoying a movie on our personal plasma screen TV, then the coup de grace, reclining our seats completely flat in order to get a surprisingly good night's sleep - see pic of Lisa snoozing as evidence. A worthy investment.

Rosario was a pleasant if slightly non-descript town but it was nice to be released from the pressures of 'must-see' sights for a couple of days. This meant we could wander the streets, drink coffee, eat pizza and go to the movies (Clash of the Titans - truly awful but hilarious for all of the references to 'saving Argos'). The town wasn't completely replete of sights though - we checked out Che Guevara's birthplace (and accompanying groovy mural - see photo), a huge monument to the designer of the Argentine flag and a rather disconcerting monument to the Falkland Islands (or Islas Malvinas as they are known here) that declared that the islands are 'always Argentina's.'

Rosario provided some much needed respite as next up was the rather full on Buenos Aires, an international mega-city to happily compete with London, New York or Paris. We have just completed our first full day here and already we've explored the famous Recoleta cemetery which features some family vaults that make Vegas look tasteful and taken in a tango show that varied in quality from excellent to confusing - c.f. a tango to Sweet Dreams by Annie Lennox featuring light up feather boas, bewildering. Tomorrow we move it up a gear with another big one, a visit to La Bombonera for a Boca Juniors match. Very, very excited.