Normally a 13 hour overnight bus ride would fill me with dread. But in Argentina it’s something to look forward to, especially if you go first class.
A first class ticket on the bus line Cata gets you a big seat, foot rest, blanket, pillow, newspaper, curtains to section off your seat and a personal tv. You also get your own personal garbage bag which doesn’t sound like much unless your husband has a cold and is going through a lot of tissues.
Soon after the bus started out we got served this sandwhich with either water or coke. My first thought was, “Nice, but this is not going to hold me for 13 hours.”
Ham item #1
It turns out this was just the appetizer. The second thing we were served was this plate of assorted mini ham sandwiches.
Ham items #2-#5. Guess what the empanada was filled with.... ham.
This course came with it’s own mini bottle of wine.
not bad for bus wine
Then came the main course, breaded meat, potatoes all covered in ham. It looks weird, but was strangely delicious.
Ham item #6 - ham covered meat and potatoes
We had the choice of coffee, tea, water or champagne with dessert. It was so tempting to get champagne because when do you ever have the chance to drink champagne on a bus? But, I went with water. I wasn’t sure how champagne would taste with flan.
bus flan - delicious
Then it was movie time. We had the choice between two different movies, both in English with Spanish subtitles. Once the movie was over everyone pulled their curtains around their seats, lowered their seats back and put up their foot rests. The seat turned into a fully horizontal bed.
The best part besides the fully reclining seat, wine, and garbarge bag was that for the entire night the rest of the bus, all 18 other passengers were silent. No cell phones, talking, kids crying, nothing. Just pure silence. We both actually got a pretty good night’s sleep considering we were on a bus.
The next morning we were served orange juice, coffee, and a plate of assorted cookies, no ham. If we weren’t leaving Argentina tomorrow I’d take a few more buses. It was that much fun. But, then again I do amuse easily.
With less than a week left to go in Argentina, I realize there is no way I can do it. I was very eager early on, but then as I ran out of the popular cuts and was left with lots of organs, I lost my appetite. When faced with the choice at a restaurant – the best, most tender rib-eye steak you’ve ever had, or kidneys, it was not a hard choice.
I’m so not ruining this wine with something gross.
So, I continued to eat lots and lots of beef but stopped trying to eat all the parts. I did recently add one new part of the cow to my list, and a scary part of a pig.
First the pig, no it’s not a pig head.
Blood Sausage
I love sausage of all types. But, there is something disturbing to me about blood sausage, it’s not even the name or idea of blood sausage. It’s the color. Blood sausage is really dark, almost black. I think if it was bright red it wouldn’t be so disturbing.
these all look kind of gross
So when our friends Nati and Frankie came over for an asado (Argentinian barbecue) with blood sausage, I knew now was the time to try it.
Try it! All the cool people are eating it.
Jeff cooked it up and left it on the fire until it sort of split open.
Jeff: Is there really blood in it? Frankie: Yes, yes there is.delicious!
And then I tried it. Here’s the thing, blood sausage is amazing! It doesn’t taste like blood, it is soft and slightly sweet. I’m not sure what it tastes like in other countries, but in Argentina, cooked over a wood fire, it’s incredible.
Mollejas
Mollejas are also known as sweetbreads or the thymus gland of a cow. When our friend Leandro came over for an asado he brought all kinds of meat including mojellas. One last thing to add to my cow list.
I promise you, you will like them.
I have to admit, they didn’t look pretty raw.
Vegetarians – look away
He doused them with fresh squeezed lemon juice and salt. Once on the grill they started to look better.
And then, when we actually ate them, they were really good. The texture is a big weird, sort of spongy, but they taste great.
So, that’s it for the cow eating on this trip. I plan to eat several more pieces of cow between now and when we go back to the US, but they will be my favorite cuts bife de chorizo and bife de lomo. Not only will I not be eating an entire cow in one sitting, I won’t be eating an entire cow in one country. The rest of the parts will need to be eaten on other trips.
When we planned a day of wine tasting in Lujan our goal was to taste a lot of wine. We achieved our goal and learned the meaning of the saying, “too much of a good thing.”
Lujan is only thirty minutes from Mendoza, or ninety minutes if you get lost, end up in a traffic jam, get lost again, then end up behind a horse.
It's harder to pass a horse than you might think.
Our appointment (all wineries require appointments) with Kaiken was at 9:30. We didn’t get there until 11:00 which is just as well. 9:30 am is a bit early for wine tasting, even for us. There was already a tour scheduled, but they were super nice to let us tag along.
The first taste was straight from the tank. If I knew how much wine was coming later in the day, I would have skipped this one.
Tasting directly from the tank, sounds better than it is.
The following tastes were really good and plentiful. Kaiken has some really great wines.
I must have already been tipsy at this point because I insisted we buy two Kaiken wine glasses. I’m sure two fragile wine glasses won’t be too hard to pack in our already stuffed suitcases.
Just what we need in Seattle more wine glasses!
By this point it was good we had already agreed that Jeff would be the designated driver all day. Jeff was completely sober before getting in the car, all day long. The same could not be said for me as a passenger.
Next stop was Ruca Malen for a luxurious five course meal. The lunch cost $100 US for both of us. In Argentina that is a lot of money and for us on this trip it’s a lot. We debated for days prior if we should do it or not.
You would think this was a government facility instead of a winery with the amount of security they had. A security guard had to radio someone to confirm our reservations before opening the gate.
checking to make sure we're not....wine robbers?
Once we got there and saw the view, we didn’t have any doubts about lunch.
You know it’s going to be lavish when then menu of what you’ll be eating and drinking for the day is an entire page long.
this was all for lunch
Course #1 – corn soup served with chardonnay. This was pretty good. The wine was better than the soup. I’m never crazy for soup where I need to floss afterward.
Course #2 – sweet potato and meat empanada with some kind of sauce, served on a fancy piece of wood, with a cute little shot glass of sauce. Served with a cabernet. This was my favorite part of the meal. It was super good.
good presentation and delicous
Course #3 – honestly, by this point I had already had too much wine. They were pouring my 3rd glass, a syrah, while I was still on my 2nd. At this point I wish I had remembered you don’t need to drink the entire glass. Tasting is just fine, and chugging to catch up is not recommended. The 3rd course was called a “creamy roasted aubergine croquette” also known as a giant french fry stuffed with eggplant. I loved it, Jeff not so much.
Course #4 – they switched to larger glasses and larger pours at this point. Our food was some kind of steak with a side of blueberries and stuff. There were two glasses of wine with this course, both reds, both good. At this point I had had so much wine that I didn’t even mind when I bit into a blueberry, a bug crawled out and onto my face. Normally that would have caused a freakout on my part, but instead I just brushed it onto the ground and stomped on it.
steak, potato cakes with a bug filled blueberry garnish
Course #5 – OK this was the first course that I thought was stupid. It was a glass of ice. Pretty, but dumb. Wine didn’t come with this course which was good because I needed the glass of ice break to catch up on the wines I was behind on.
could have skipped the glass of ice course
Course #6 – this dessert was awesome. It was some kind of white chocolate thing. It was served with champagne which I did not drink. By this time I realized it was time for me to stop drinking.
white chocolate desertundrunk wine, sad really
Course #7 – finally, just coffee! Some cookies and blobs of sweet stuff came with this course.
I think this dinner was supposed to take three leisurely hours. We were so hungry going into it we somehow ate and drank everything in an hour. This was a mistake since we were not feeling so hot afterward. They had some chairs outside the restaurant which I sat in to take in the view. Later Jeff woke me up to tell me it was time to go.
Now this would have been a very good time to go home. But, when a rental car costs $100 a day, you have appointments at two more wineries, and you are marathon wine tasters, you don’t let a little mid day hang over stop you. As soon as we were rested and 100% sober, we were back to the car.
come on, we've got two more to go to.
Next stop was Lagarde. Our appointment was at 3:00pm, but Jeff called them to tell them we would be late due to his wife being in a food coma. They were nice enough to let us come at 4:00.
There was quite a lot of good wine to be tasted at Lagarde.
Our guide was super nice and happy to pour us as much as we wanted, but we had to cut her off. That’s the first time I’ve actually liked the wine and had to beg NOT to try it.
And then it was off to yet another winery. Clos de Charcas.
We shared a tasting here which was a good move since even sharing was more than enough.
The outside patio was really nice and reminded us of some wineries in Washington State. Although, in Woodinville they don’t usually have to top their hedges with barbed wire.
barbed wire hedge
After this winery we went home and took a very very long nap. Wine tasting in Lujan is really fun and I’m glad we did the fancy lunch. But, I wished we had taken our time with it and not visited four wineries in one day. I never thought I’d say it, but it was too much wine.
There are certain things I like in a market – produce, meat, local specialties, interesting people, and gross stuff. The Mendoza market or Mercado Central has the perfect mix of all of these things. I was able to shop, buy stuff for dinner, see cool stuff, and freak out at gross stuff.
The Mendoza market had just enough of everything. This was different than the Salta market which had way too much gross stuff for my tourist eyes to take in. Jeff wasn’t over the trauma of the Salta market either.
Please don't make me go in there.
We started in the food court. We don’t usually take our laptops to a market, but it was nice to know we could.
There was nothing gross to see in the food court, and our lunch of grilled chicken was good.
I like this market.
We saw them delivering the wood used to grill our chicken.
This was just for one restaurant.
After lunch we headed in to the actual mercado. First thing I liked, it was crowded, but manageable. It didn’t feel like you would get trampled by camera wielding tourists if a seafood vendor started throwing fish like in Seattle’s Pike Place market.
Crowds but not crowded.
We started off in the safe areas, cheese, spices, candy. Interesting, not gross.
Nothing gross about cheese.Who doesn't like candy?
Here is a local specialty. It looks like it might be something really gross with a name like membrillo. The first time I saw it I thought membrane of what? Is it congealed fat? But, no, it’s like a jam made out of fruit.
Next we headed into the meat section. By this time I was itching to see something gross and was not disappointed. But, here’s the nice thing about the market, the organs were all under glass. Nothing is hanging in your face.
Tongues and brains anyone?
OK this stuff was hanging, but at least you could identify it, well some of it.
There is a seafood section which is interesting. It’s hard to find seafood in Mendoza. I’m guessing this is coming from Chile.
They had a nice selection of gross, but not too gross.
Same with the chicken vendors. Chicken feet are gross to me. But they’re behind glass, so no chance you’d actually bump into them.
Nothing like a good chicken foot on a crisp fall day.
Even the giant hanging slabs of meat were kept in the back. And, all the organs seemed to be inside the slab, not hanging out.
Things got a big worse gross-wise in the pork section.
this little piggie went to market (literally)
Worst of all was a giant pig head hanging there staring at me. The photo is pretty gross, but if you want to see it you can click here. Photo of pig head.
But, then right when we were really grossed out, we met these super nice people. We had a great time talking to them in a mixture of Spanish and English. The man, we can’t remember his name, spoke really good English. Anita, spoke seven languages including English.
We bought a bunch of stuff, from figs, to pork tenderloin, to eggs, to an entire coked chicken.
These bags do not contain any pig heads.
We’ll be going back for more shopping in a few days. Now we know where to go for fresh veggies, meat, eggs and a little bit of gross.
When I changed the name of my blog to Sounds Good on Paper, I didn’t expect the very next thing we did would fall into this category. But, wine tasting in San Juan became one of those things that sounded so good on paper. Sometimes things sound good on paper, turn out differently and are even better than planned.
And sometimes they just suck. Wine tasting in San Juan turned into one of the sucks days.
On Paper: rent car, drive through beautiful countryside to city of San Juan where we would wine taste lots of amazing wine.
Reality: Spent way too much money on a rental car. Spent 9 hours driving, 8 of which we were lost. Got to one winery, tasted one wine.
First thing that went wrong was the car rental. We had reserved a nice, cheap but safe car online. When we got to the office, all they had was a tiny, very unsafe no airbag cars. There are eight car companies in Mendoza, there was only one rental car in all of Mendoza with air bags, and it was twice the price.
Eight rental agencies, only one car with airbags.
But, we paid and were off. Second problem, we could not find our way out of Mendoza, even with our GPS. Jeff drove through dodgy intersections around and around, while that damn GPS lady kept “recalculating.”
can't imagine why we would get lost
But, then we were on the open road, ready to explore the province of San Juan. I will admit, this was pretty…for the first fifteen minutes. This one continuous mountain got a bit old 2 1/2 hours into the drive.
We finally got to San Juan and after spending another hour lost, we got to the first winery – Graffigna. The winery tour took an hour. Jeff got to stand in a room made out of a wine barrel.
Who knew this would be the highlight of the day.
Then it was finally time for a tasting. The one malbec we tried was good. If we knew it would be the only tasting of the day, we would have asked for a refill.
drink it slow, it's all you're getting
Then it was off to Callia. This was one of the main reasons we went to San Juan. We’ve been drinking and loving their wine since getting to Argentina. We called in advance, they had tours at 9, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3, 4. It was 2:00, more than enough time to get there.
Tell that damn GPS woman to shut up.
We got a bit lost, and then drove in circles, then we found the correct road and it was closed off for repaving, then we drove around in more circles, and then we almost threw our GPS out the window. But, we finally made it there at 3:22. A guard at the winery gate greeted us and we had this exchange in Spanish:
Guard: Sorry last tour was at 3:00pm.
Jeff: But, we called the last tour is supposed to be at 4:00.
Guard: Yes, but not today.
Jeff: But…is today a special day?
Guard: No, every day the tour is at 4:00. But not today.
Jeff: Can we come in and buy a glass of wine.
Guard: No.
Jeff: Can we come in and buy a bottle of wine?
Guard: No.
Jeff: Can we come in and just see the winery?
Guard: No.
Sheryl (yelling from the passenger seat): We just drove here from friggin Mendoza. Can you just let us in for a minute to try your damn wine?
Guard: No
Jeff: Can you tell us how to get to another winery?
Guard: No, it’s complicated.
Jeff: Can you tell us how to get back to town?
Guard: Go to your right, it’s faster but is complicated. Go to your left, it takes longer but is easy.
We took the long way. By the time we got into town all the rest of the wineries were closed. That was OK through. We found a wine bar. We sat down, a waitress came over, told us they didn’t have wine by the glass. In fact, they didn’t even have a bottle of the wine advertised on the tables.
Remember Napa and Walla Walla where you can actually taste wine?
So then we just went to another restaurant sat down ordered a big bottle of wine and drank it.
Then I saw these great mannequins.
Does she have cat ears?Why so sad little mannequin boy?Have you ever seen a mannequin with worry lines on his forehead?
After walking around town for awhile it was time for the 2 1/2 hour drive home. First we spent an hour getting lost on the way out of town. But then we drove the 2 1/2 hours without incident. Back in Mendoza we stopped for gas. The only station open had a 30 minute long wait.
What is this the 1970's?
We left our apartment at 8:30am. We arrived back at 11:30pm. While we didn’t do much wine tasting. We did get in some good wine drinking. Although it wasn’t the day we had hoped for, I’ve decided every day of travel is good, even when it sort of sucks.
Normally a 13 hour overnight bus ride would fill me with dread. But in Argentina it’s something to look forward to, especially if you go first class.
