Mendoza

We arrived 4 hours earlier than the schedule said. We had specifically booked the bus because it was supposed to arrive in the morning 🤨 But luckily there was a bus terminal where we could lay down and get in some more sleep. This worked more or less for another 2.5 hours but then it got too noisy and we walked a bit out of the terminal to a nearby McDonald's for breakfast. There we also got in touch with the money, so they have a really bad inflation currently which means that the official exchange rate is bad:
1€ = 190 Pesos, inofficial rate 1€ = 395 Pesos
This means that we can't pay by card because it'll cost double the actual amount. You get the inofficial rate only by cash currency exchange (best is with clean, 100 USD bills) or by sending yourself money through Western Union. Just as some background... After a little McDonald's breakfast we walked to our hostel, checked in and dropped off our luggage. The receptionist was really friendly and explained us the city detailed. We were excited to have a look around...

Still relatively early in the morning we started the exploration of the city which turned out after a short while to be a real jewel! Broad walkways, all covered by the big old trees standing along the streets. Plazas with mosaics, fountains and large seating areas. Old colonial style buildings mixed with newer architecture. A huge park in a 15 minutes walking distance from the city center with an artificial lake... All of this gives Mendoza a real unique and interesting style. Besides that it felt super safe. So our first impression that we had by walking more than 15km through the city was more than good. This first excursion was concluded by the omnipresent Pancho's from a chain named Mr. Dog 🐕😁

We went back to the hostel to complete the check in and inform ourselves about the tours that are offered. Today there were two, horse riding and a wine tour. We wanted to do the horse riding but unfortunately it didn't fit in so we decided to do the wine tour and olive oil factory... An hour later we were picked up by a mini tour bus and brought to the olive oil factory. There we got to taste a large selection of olive oils after she explained the process and the meaning of several terms like virgin etc. The tasting was pretty good, especially because we were a little hungry 😁 But it wasn't exceptionally good 🤷‍♂️ Afterwards we drove to a winery which is pretty small and got a short tour through the production and then had a wine tasting again 🍇🍷
The wines were great and if I'd had the chance I'd have taken a box with me. The last stop was a larger winery which mainly just exports its wine. The wines weren't really good here and we were glad that we didn't book the tour with three wineries 😅 But we're slowly getting the hang of wine tasting and the differences are getting clearer. So we had fun at the tour even though we were the only ones that didn't buy anything 🤷‍♂️

When we came back to the hostel we needed to go to the bus terminal to book our next leg. Luckily he accepted our (not perfect) US Dollar bills because it's been hard to use them and we're not sure when we can get Argentinian pesos again. From there we went directly back into town. We had looked up the Argentinian restaurants and found two that sounded interesting. The first one turned out to be quite expensive and had mainly Italian options. The second one looked amazing right from the start! An old school decor paired with a small but interesting menu that had only portions for two or three people. So we decided on a shared first course of salad and a potato pie as main. Of course it needed to be accompanied by a local wine 🍷☺️ It was an amazing, delicious dinner with a tasty wine. Happy but tired we walked back to the hostel and fell exhausted in our bunk beds.Read more