Advertisement
Published: January 26th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Men and a Grill
Eric and Lucas work on the asado. Cordobese Amigos
After our overnight bus to Cordoba, which was not Royal Suite, and not as comfortable as our ride to Mendoza, we arrived first thing in the morning to Cordoba. Our initial plans were to stay as long as possible in Mendoza before heading back to Buenos Aires for our flight to the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, we returned to Cordoba to see our new friends, Jenny and Lucas. In total, our Argentine adventure included Buenos Aires to Cordoba to Mendoza and eventually back to Mendoza to Cordoba to Buenos Aires. We certainly were not original in our itinerary, but thought we would use the opportunity to spend some more time with all of our new South American friends. Thankfully Lucas does not drink and Jenny does not drink much, so what we knew we would get was two nights to recuperate from our late nights in Mendoza.
We arrived at their house around 8am and spent the morning catching up. We then checked into our hostel and needed to find lunch. We did not receive a decent recommendation from the hostel so we walked about nine or ten blocks closer to the hostel we stayed at
Jenny, March, and Marco
A nice outdoor asado with new friends. last time for our favorite lunch spot in Cordoba. I still have no idea what the name is of the place, but I was happy to return for a milanesa completa - thin, fried steak, with lettuce, tomato, egg, and cheese. After a bit of a nap we returned to see Jenny and Lucas who arranged a Cordobese asado with some of their friends, Marco, March, and David. Lucas did it up with sausage, black sausage, ribs, various cuts of beef, and more. We tried our Dario green pepper trick one more time, with somewhat more success. Maybe the third time we will get it right. We spent a lovely night outside in the yard chatting, and luckily, not drinking all that much. We tried, though, the other Argentine drink, Gancia liquor with Sprite - pretty tasty. We spent the following day at the house again, learning about websites and IT, the world of Jenny and Lucas and their company, Triple Smart. For dinner, we hit a local neighborhood restaurant, outside of the city center. It was a brief visit with friends, but I am glad we made the quick stopover.
Bus Ride From Hell and a Flight
North
We opted for a day bus to Buenos Aires to avoid taking a night bus followed by an overnight flight out of Buenos Aires. We also needed some place to kill a day in BA, and chose the Sheraton. We were happy we did once we were on the bus. It was a regular old bus, with at least a foot rest, but it was a long ten hour ride. All of the buses from Cordoba to Buenos Aires are local buses, pulling off the road into small towns miles off the highway. Towards the end of the ride we were mad with boredom. I finished my last book, was trying to listen to music, but Eric was fidgety next time. We were fit to be tied when we arrived. Despite it being the New Year, Eric still has his Platinum status at Starwood, so we were greeted by the manager of the Sheraton hotel. They left us platters of sweets, cheese, and breads, and a bottle Argentine malbec in our two room suite. We had a quick snack and tried to go out to our favorite parilla for dinner, Flowers, but being a Sunday night, it
was closed. We hit another parilla we had been to before for vacio steak sandwiches and choripan (sausage on bread) with chimichurri sauce and Quilmes. The following afternoon we managed to hit Flowers parilla for a last chance feast of beef. Eric ordered his choripan and a chorisquito steak sandwich. I ordered my favorite milanesa sandwich, with the chimchurri sauce dripping down my arm. I loved every minute of it. And, to really push our luck, we ordered a portion of beef ribs, which we could not finish, but I did not want to miss it. Eric had to roll me out of there. It was a perfect last meal in Argentina. We said adios to Argentina, and to South America, and we headed back north, to the cold. We were not thrilled.
Heading North and East - in Transit
Late the following night we boarded our United flight to Washington, D.C. We spent three nights in D.C. and Maryland with some friends and family, using the opportunity to swap out our warm weather clothes (so long sarong) and picking up colder weather clothes (hello jackets, jeans, scarves, and gloves). We both received our first haircuts
since our Vietnamese haircuts in late August. We repacked our belongings and started making our way to the homeland. We flew from Dulles to Newark where we picked up Eric’s mother for our brief, but overnight flight to Ireland. Between January 7 and January 15 we worked in two overnight buses, a twelve hour day time bus ride, and two over night flights before arriving in a chilly Shannon airport in pitch blackness at quarter to seven in the morning. We traveled a long way but finally made it home to the family - to our homeland.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0363s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb