Mendoza, Argentina
From Santiago we hopped on a quick one hour flight to the Argentine wine country in Mendoza... bring on the Malbec! The views during our flight were beautiful. We flew over snow-caped Andes and caught a glimpse of Aconcagua, the second highest mountain in the world.
To get a feel for the city, we spent our first two nights in downtown Mendoza. A quaint lil town with many restaurants, bars, and boutiques. Upon arrival we settled into town at a beautiful restaurant situated in a garden, a great recommendation by our Airbnb host for dinner and drinks, and spent the following day exploring the Parque San Martín, Plaza Independencia and Plaza España...
After two days hanging downtown, we hopped in a 20 minute cab to our next "country" accommodation, perfectly placed in a maze of wineries. Our host provided us with a personalized wine vineyard "treasure map" and equipped us with two bikes... before we could unpack we were off to drink some Argentine vino at our first winery! We arrived at Vistalba for what we thought was going to be a casual lunch with a small wine tasting... it turned into an awesome 4-course meal paired with endless wine and champagne, pure bliss!
Vistalba...
Amazing food and wine, our first day was a success. Laura's feelin good! ...
Day 2, more wine tasting! We hopped back on our bikes, a beautiful ride passing vineyards on either side of us. Massive wine barrels lined the streets. First stop, Neito Denetiner. Our wine tour included us meeting a "quite lovely" couple from London, Nisha and Vish...
The tasting lasted much much longer than we expected and we we were late for our next vineyard tour... but we couldn't help it, we had to stay and finish off three bottles with Nisha and Vish, the Malbec was just too damn good!
Feeling really awesome, we hopped on our bikes and made our way to the next tasting... a picnic at Alta Vista that included blankets, pillows, wine, beautiful scenery, wine, and a box lunch with three different baguette sandwiches, fruit, wine, cheese, wine, salad, shrimp ceviche, and mas vino!
Our final day in Mendoza was Sunday. Unfortunately, vineyards are closed on Sundays, but we didn't mind as we resorted to relaxing with a floaty in the pool all day 🙂
We shared our Airbnb with a friendly couple from Buenos Aires, Fran and Dani who made us a unique cocktail with Cynar, an Italian bitter liquor that contains artichoke as the main ingredient... it's mixed with freshly squeezed oranges and grapefruit soda... awesome pool day and a great last night with good company, music, food and drink!
Glad to be well rested. Necessary before our upcoming 5 day/4 night trek in Patagonia through Torres Del Paine! ...
It all looked So spectacular, I’m jealous. Mom
Soooooo Jealous. 🙂
MaMa Leone xxxooo
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you two this but that is my kind of vacation – I see a vacation together back to this gem in our future we will need you as our tour guides! Laura look beautiful as always.Sean (you always look beautiful also) but especially so in the candid picture by the light post. Love and miss you both! Ben and Leah
I thought of you while we were there! We would love for you guys to join us..next tasting Stellenbosch Cape Town! 🙂 Miss you. xxo