Mendoza seems to be a favorite for Poppy and I. It is the perfect size city. We were told it is about 1 million people. It has wonderful food, wineries right outside of town, shopping and beautiful plazas to chill at on a lazy sunday. Plaza España was my favorite! We had amazing dinners and lunches at every place we chose. We did get some funky tortilla chips at the Mexican restaurant, but the main course and the Argentinian beer was great! All of the Mendocinos were hospitable and wonderful. We stayed at at the Quinta Rufino B&B and the owners were great.
We did two wine tours. The first was more of a bus ride around the region and it stopped at a huge winery and then at an estancia for lunch. The tour ran all day, and we ended up sleeping on the bus and not listening to anything because we were both tired, the spanish was technical and fast and we expected to see more vineyards. The second tour included two bodegas (wineries) and a place that makes olive oil. We were a fan of this last tour. The wines were so-so, but the last vineyard was organic and everything was done by hand! We ended up buying various bottles of wine and most restaurants allow you to bring your own wine so we always seem to have bottles in our backpacks! Poppy almost got me in trouble because she had a corkscrew in her backpack, but they thought it was mine at the airport and I had to dump my bag out as the flight attendant was signaling that we had to hurry because they were holding the flight for us! Fortunately they let us go, and Poppy kept her corkscrew. But I´m getting ahead of myself.
Saturday night we attended the gala where they crown the queen of festival. The festival is a celebration of the harvest of the grapes and the wine. During the day we went to the parade and they were grilling meat on some of the floats and girls were throwing anything from glamour shots of themselves, to grapes to large squash. It was all very interesting. The gala included a choreographed dance that they practiced all year and it was amazing! The crowning of the queen was lengthy they announced each vote and it took hours. Really after they said ¨San Martín¨ the first 100 times we could all guess who was going to win!
All in all I would tell anyone and everyone to visit this wonderful city if they ever get the chance!
