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There are two "Hop On Hop Off (HOHO)" bus tours of Buenos Aires. One is by a company called "Buenos Aires City Bus" that has yellow buses and the other is operated by "Grey Line" and has red buses. They both cover almost the same routes and attractions and both have double decker buses with open tops that can be closed when it rains. If you aren't familiar with "Hop On Hop Off (HOHO)" bus tours, you can get off at any attraction that interests you and then board the next bus that comes along to continue your journey. This tour was about 3 hours in duration. We usually like to make one complete circuit picking out which attractions we may want to visit. We usually then make a second circuit stopping at the places that interested us. You can purchase either a one day or two day ticket.
We boarded at the Obelisco bus stop which was just a few blocks from our hotel. Tickets can be purchased there for either the yellow bus or the red bus, or they can be purchased in advance online. So far we have found that we are able to use our VISA credit card everywhere we've made a purchase, including a bottle of water that was only 75 cents! Some merchants only accept Argentinian Pesos and do not accept U.S. Dollars, so our credit card has come in pretty handy. The Buenos Aires government has set a promotional exchange rate for credit cards to attract foreign tourists. It isn't as good as the "Blue Rate" but it is way below the "Official Exchange Rate."
The below photos were taken in order as we rode the Hop On Hop Off bus:
While we were on the Hop On Hop Off bus I was looking for somewhere we could go to taste some Argentina wines. During my search I found a very promising place, "Pain et Vin," that my Google Maps said was only 0.2 miles (1000 feet) from our current location! So Barbara and I decided to get off at the next stop and walk to it. Unfortunately by the time the bus got to the next stop, it was now 0.7 miles away. But since it was only about 3 PM and Pain et Vin didn't open until 4 PM, we figured we had plenty of time to walk back to the wine bar. We got there at about 3:30 PM. It was closed but the door was unlocked so we went in anyway. The merchant was nice enough to let us use his restroom and also explain to us about the wine tasting experience. Since they were cleaning up the place getting ready to open, he could not let us stay inside. But he did set up 2 chairs for us outside and offered us some water.
At 4 PM he invited us to come inside. They do Wine Tastings Tuesday through Saturday at 4:30 PM and 7:30 PM so we signed up for the 4:30 PM wine tasting. While waiting we purchased a cold glass of Argentina sparkling wine. The wine tasting is $35 US for 4 different glasses of Argentina wine plus cheese and sourdough bread. It includes an in-depth explanation of the wines and the history of wines in Argentina. Fortunately both the merchant and our wine guide, Mia, spoke English. If you are not up for the whole Wine Tasting experience, you can just buy a wine flight for about $8.50 per person which includes 3 tasting samples plus cheese and sourdough bread. They also offer a good number of wines that you can just buy by the glass ranging from about $1.90 US to $3.00 US per glass. They also have Cheese Plates and Charcuterie Plates ranging from about $2 US to $5.50 US per plate. Check their website for other food items available. Since they are also a wine shop, they have a large variety of wines that you can purchase for take-out.
If you are a wine lover, I'd highly recomment the Wine Tasting experience at Pain et Vin!
Above is the map used by our Wine Tasting guide, Mia, to explain the various wine regions of Argentina, including a little history of each region. She showed us where each of the wines we were tasting came from as well as the climate of each wine growing region.
Our favorite was the Mendel Unus so we purchased a bottle of that to take back to our hotel room. We called an Uber to take us the 3 miles back to our hotel as we didn't feel like walking after all that wine. The cost of the Uber was just US $4 and we gave our driver a US $1 tip on the Uber App.
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If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know.
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