It was holiday Monday in Mendoza and we were still a bit unsure about what we would do today. We really needed to do some more research on how to best explore the Malbec wine area.

We headed out onto the streets in the direction of Anna's Bistro for some breakfast. The streets were deserted and most of the shops were closed although the CATA bus company's ticket office was open so we managed to book a bus trip back to Chile on Wednesday.

Breakfast at Anna's Bistro was sensational. We had a table in the garden and Maria ordered the Scandinavian eggs with smoked salmon which came with good coffee, yoghurt & granola with honey, orange juice and ham & cheese croissant. David's was pretty similar except he had chorizo sausages with his eggs and instead of the croissant, had the choice of two facturas. A factura is an Argentinian word for a pastry so he had a choc-au-pain and a dulce de leche pastry. Everything was simply delicious and they even had fast WiFi to do a bit more online research into the wine tasting.

Walking back towards the centre after breakfast we stopped at a tourist information kiosk and we were advised again that today is not the best day to visit wineries as it's a public holiday, better tomorrow. It would however be easy enough to take a public bus to Maipu and then hire bicycles to ride between the vineyards.

We bought a card for the bus and credited it with fares to take us to Maipu and back tomorrow and then went in search of the bus stop so there would be no frustrations in the morning.

With everything sorted for tomorrow, we could now have a wander round Mendoza properly. Avenida San Martin, the shopping street, was the first we came across but most shops were closed for either the holiday or lunch.
There are four smaller plazas around the main plaza of Mendoza, we had seen two yesterday during our search for ATMs so today we went to see Plaza Espana with it's ceramic tiles and Plaza Italia, an almost barren piece of wasteland.

Avenida Aristides Villanueva took us from the Italian plaza to the main park. The street was full of bars and restaurants and no doubt on any other day than a holiday Monday, it would be buzzing. Only a few places were open, even the Irish Bar had its doors firmly locked.

Parque General San Martin was a bit overgrown and without a fence as such it was difficult to determine where the park started. There were plenty of people in the park, groups of boys having a kick around with a football and families having picnics. What would have been a very nice lake looked badly neglected, the water level was low and full of rubbish and weed.

We left the park and headed back towards the centre on Avenida E Civit which in contrast to the park, was full of fancy, well maintained houses and some very expensive looking restaurants.

The girl from tourist information had told us this morning that the shopping mall on the outskirts of town would be open so we hopped on a bus from Plaza Independencia to check it out. It was very busy at the mall despite the shops being very expensive, i.e. the same walking shoes we bought for the trip were twice the price we paid in Finland. Argentina is obviously not as cheap for shopping as we thought.

We didn't stay long in the mall and were back on the bus within 90 minutes so there was no need to pay new fare although for some reason one of us was charged again, maybe the the card was swiped twice by accident. It was only 50 cents so we can probably survive losing the money.

Quinta Norte was a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant for dinner and with its outside seating on a street corner with views into the main plaza, it looked pretty good. The food however was woeful, we were given a very bland pizza and the restaurant didn't even have any hot sauce to liven it up. The Andes beer was very good though. We had bought the dinner deal so to make ourselves feel better we walked away thinking that we were given a ****** pizza with our nice beer instead of getting a free beer with our pizza.