The Bernardo Family: Argentina & Uruguay vacation

Right after Thanksgiving, Frank and I left for a vacation to celebrate my upcoming 30th birthday. We went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Carmelo and Colonia, Uruguay, and we had a great time! We stayed in three different hotels during our 5-day stay, so we moved around a lot and got to see a lot of different places in a short amount of time. Buenos Aires was a huge, crowded, beautiful, dirty city. After walking around for a few hours, our feet would be completely black when we got back to our hotel room. There are two huge coal plants right outside the city, which does not help the pollution. My throat was bothered immediately, and I felt like I was constantly inhaling smoke. Despite the pollution, BA is a gorgeous city. There were blooming trees with purple flowers everywhere, and there were several parks, fountains, and monuments scattered around the city. Uruguay was a complete world apart from BA. Carmelo was a quaint, rural town in Uruguay's wine county, and Colonia was a charming, historic town with tree lined cobblestone streets.

In my opinion, the highlight of the trip was the food. We had some absolutely amazing food in BA and in Uruguay. My favorites were the dulce de leche helado and the cheese plate at Narbona winery, the filet at The Bistro, the mushroom tart and salad at Social Paraiso, the spinach mushroom croquettes at Herman Giopponi, and the spinach, pumpkin and corn souffle at Don Julio. If you ever go to Argentina or Uruguay, I highly recommend all of these restaurants!

It was wonderful to spend a few days alone with Frank, since we are both so busy and rarely get any time together. Almost every night after Frankie goes to bed, Frank goes into his office to study and I go into our bedroom to work. We are so ready for Frank to be done with grad school so that we will get more quality time together and as a family. It was very hard to be away from Frankie for so long. Our cell phones did not work while we were there, so we could only communicate with my Mom via e-mail. I was so ready to come home and see my baby boy! I am not sure if I want to take another long trip like that without him for a long time.

Here are a bunch of pictures from our trip:

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Decorating our wine bottle at Don Julio, Palmero