We ended our little escapade at a place called La Mia Papa which was recommended by the Lonely Planet. The dinner was buffet style and went for about $25CDN. Sounds steep but it's ALL YOU CAN DRINK AND EAT. Drinks included hard and soft liquor and pretty much as many Pisco Sours as you can handle. The food was pretty good and there was a very wide range of sides on top of very tender well done steaks and chicken. I believe they also had blood sausage which we avoided. I went a little overboard and managed render myself unable to eat much while I was dazed from merely two drinks. So sad. Anyone with a decent tolerance would get their money's worth! Lucky that Sandy had an appetite and made our trip worthwhile :)
1. The grills are fed by coal heat and constantly running at burning red ember temperatures.
2. The chefs were efficient and kept their stations clean and orderly. Well oiled machine for sure.
3. The raw steaks came in on trays and came in volumes. This is a T-Bone. It was hard not to feel excited.
4. They have pictures of prize winning cows on their walls. These guys love their beef.
We ended up in the very chic Bar Uriarte which is two stories with the restaurant below and an art gallery above. The food was first class and the price was fitting for the quality. All in all this was a great spot for lunch - it even had an outdoor fireplace and patio area.
We also noted a law court with incredible architecture!
We decided to turn in early today in preparation for our flight to Iguazu so we dined at Cubana in Recoleta. This is a hot spot in town with Pizza, Empanadas, Calzones and some kind of cheese stew. Prices were reasonable which explained the large number of locals and the service was good. They even had crayons and paper table cloths for the young at heart.
All in all today was not very picture worthy so this update has few. Don't worry the next post has many many many!
A short 1.5 hour flight later we land in Iguazu and take a shuttle to our hotel "Hotel Cataratas *****". Yes the hotel name has 5 stars next to it. No, it is NOT a 5 star hotel [shrug>. Actually the hotel is VERY nice and does not live up to the lower expectations we had from reading TripAdvisor. Perhaps they did a remodeling since the last reviews.
We dropped our bags off in our lovely room overlooking the pool complete with cascading waterfalls and waterslides. Nice. We wanted to hit the park right away so we didn't spend much time at the hotel and were soon on our 5 peso bus to the park. Local transit kicks ass. I believe the taxi's were charging 70 pesos.
We toured the park as fully as we had time for end landed back at the hotel around 8pm. We stopped by the Sheraton which is the only hotel INSIDE the park with rooms overlooking the falls. Pretty cool but not worth the cash, the falls are way cooler up close and the hotel isn't all that close (which is a good thing).
There was an incident of the bus NOT stopping by the hotel on the way back and we had to hike it backwards to the place but it wasn't as bad as it initially seemed. Regardless none of that made the day less amazing.
Got back on the plane and flew back to Buenos Aires where we enjoyed a meal at a place not unlike Cubana's which we ate at before we left for Iguazu.
Yeah so anyways we had lunch there about 2 blocks from the zoo mentioned above and found a little spot serving empanadas, sandwiches and Lomo (meat sandwiches). I ordered their sandwich and got thin sliced beef deep fried. The food here was good and affordable. The highlight was the Chimichurro sauce they served. My gawd this stuff is good. Spicy, tangy, herbaly. Need to pick up a bottle before we come home.
On our way home we noted something that Argentinians had figured out about advertising that puts them way ahead of us silly Canadians. Why have cars drive by your billboard advertisement when the billboard can go to the cars? Brilliant!
Oh yeah and James this pic is for you!
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