Speaking of Malbec...

The whole idea for this post came from a bottle of Malbec. You see, last night The Husband and I had one of our favorite kind of dates. The kind where we wait until the kids go to bed, sit on our own front porch, open a bottle of wine, and talk until we can't keep our eyes open any longer. We love our porch dates, and, in fact, we love our Malbec. It's one of our favorite wines. The Husband actually popped the question over a bottle of Malbec, in a restaurant called La Rueda, in Iguazu, Argentina. Here's one of my favorite pictures from Iguazu, beautiful, isn't it?

Brings back memories....we used to go to Argentina for two weeks every year at Christmas. The Husband had family there, and, well, we'd go to visit. The seasons are switched there (Southern Hemisphere), so when we'd go at Christmas it was summer there - Heaven!! Add to that the fact that we stayed in our family's home instead of a hotel, and had the best tour guides - our family - it was always a fantastic trip. Anyway, The Husband's family has since moved on, so it's been almost three years since we've been - booooo. We miss it. While enjoying our porch date last night, we talked about how we would love to take the kids there one day, and how we would greatly enjoy revisiting our old haunts. Here are a few of our favorite places:


Iguazu Falls

As I mentioned this is where The Husband and I were engaged. It is a beautiful place, I can't do it justice in a few sentences. If I could only revisit one place in Argentina, this would be it.

San Telmo

This where we'd buy most of our Christmas gifts for the family back home. It has WONDERFUL shopping, traditional stores, antique stores, artisans...plus nice cafes. The Husband accidentally ate cow tongue here, and if I'm feeling mean, I'll remind him of it. To this day, oh, about 5 years later, he still turns green at the memory.

The Gum Tree - I couldn't find any really good links for this, but it's a 200 year old tree in the middle of the city. Some of the branches have grown so big that they are held up by supports. A cafe is located across the street from the tree, and they've set out tables and chairs, so you can have a cup of coffee or lunch while sitting in the shad of this magnificent tree!

Jumbo

As the link says, Argentina's answer to super Walmart, only more fun, you never know what you'll see in there - one time we saw an entire hog's head in the meat case. Can you imagine walking into super Walmart and buying a hog's head from the deli? Note the 50-something checkout lanes! They don't just have regular checkout lanes, either. There are the express lanes, the pregnant women lanes, and the lanes for those with small children, the delivery lanes, and lastly, the "normal" lanes.

Rio Alba (don't have a photo, there's one in the link)

This restaurant was close to where we stayed when visiting. It was a fun place, we called it the "Pink Restaurant," because it used to be painted pink and that's what the kids dubbed it. We ate there about every other day on our trips and never tired of it.

Hopefully one day we'll make it back!