Weekend Blitz

We loved staying right in the center of the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires on our trip to Argentina. While there are many wonderful neighborhoods in BA (all with very different personalities), this area is considered by many to be the most affluent neighborhood in the city, filled with lavish homes and fancy shops and restaurants. The famous Recoleta Cemetery is also located in this area, so there’s plenty to see and do all around.

We booked with Hyatt Cash+Points for $125 + 10,000 points per night. Cash rates are easily in the $500+ range, so it makes redeeming points a very attractive offer.

We used a Suite Night Award and were booked into a [...]

Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight # AR 1413 Mendoza-MDZ to Buenos Aires-AEP Dept 11:25 am Arrv 1:01 pm

Mendoza is quite a small, mostly domestic, airport. They have a few international flights, but mainly just to Santiago, Chile-SCL, just on the other side of the mountains. Our hotel advised us that arriving appx 1 hour before departure is more than enough time to check-in with bags when traveling to Buenos Aires.

We booked this segment as part of a larger Delta SkyMiles award ticket. Finding and adding Aerolíneas Argentinas award space to a Delta award reservation can be a bit tricky, so check out our guides here: Booking an Awesome Argentina Itinerary with [...]

While in Argentina’s wine country, we wanted to be sure to see some vineyards and see the outskirts of Mendoza… plus try some local wines. Mendoza’s wine regions account for about 70% of all the wine produced in Argentina, so visiting some wineries and tasting some Malbec is a must while staying in Mendoza.

Turns out, though, that planning a day trip to wineries is a little harder than we thought. Mendoza’s wine regions stretch out over more than 350,000 acres and there are three separate regions within Mendoza. So, with just one day set aside for this, we quickly realized we couldn’t see it all. First, we had to pick a region (we went with Maipú) [...]

Mendoza is an excellent small town for a self-guided walking tour and just about everything can be explored within a day on foot. We would, of course, recommend a few more days than that to explore the vineyards and, depending on the season, another day or two to check out the ski slopes that aren’t too far away.

Here’s a map of the route that has a lot of the highlights you’ll want to check out as well as practical info, such as the bus station, airport, grocery stores (to stock up on cheap Mendoza wine!), etc:

We stayed at the Park Hyatt Mendoza and would highly recommend it. It is in the perfect location and quite luxurious. Find our [...]

When we arrived in Mendoza (after bussing over the Andes – see our review of our bus trip here), we took a cab to the Park Hyatt Mendoza. The front facade of the building is perfectly gorgeous and majestic, just like many of the other Park Hyatts we’ve visited (have I mentioned it’s my favorite hotel brand?!).

The 5-star hotel is a bit smaller than several other Park Hyatts, but it’s perfect for a small city like Mendoza. I really love how Park Hyatts stay true to the culture and history of the city and especially loved the restored 19th-century Spanish colonial façade.

The hotel lobby is grand and full of marble, with large, [...]

Taking the bus from Santiago, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina, turned out to be one of the most memorable parts of our trip and made for a day of sites that were postcard-worthy. It’s always fun to try new ways to get around – I’m so glad we chose the bus route rather than just taking a short flight because we were able to see more of the countryside and an up-close view of the Andes as we drove right over them.

I was (secretly) dreading our day-long bus trip. What if it snowed and we couldn’t cross? And, more importantly, what if the roads were so bumpy and curvy that even I got car sick… and then had to stay on the bus for 5 more hours? [...]

We booked our trip to Chile and Argentina using Delta SkyMiles which worked out fine for the flights to/from the US but making the best use of our miles intra-Argentina required some research.

We’ll start with a quick recap from our post on booking the itinerary (Delta SkyMiles to Argentina: How to book Aerolineas Argentinas Award Space). If you want to get from the U.S. to Argentina (and you’re using Delta SkyMiles, KLM/Air France Flying Blue points or other SkyTeam currency), you’ll have the following choices for the long-haul flights:

My sister was studying abroad in Argentina this past semester, so McCown and I planned a trip to go and visit her. We both had a decent stockpile of Delta SkyMiles and, with the impending changes to the 2015 SkyMiles program, I really wanted to burn all of the miles that we had in the event that Delta renders them all but worthless next year.

By using Delta Skymiles, we were able to take advantage of their routing rules to have 1 free stopover and 1 free open-jaw.  It looked like this: