Eating Vegan in Korea and Japan

One of the things many people have asked about our trip to Korea and Japan last month is how did I maintain a vegan diet while we were there. Those countries are heavily reliant on seafood, and even in dishes that are not inherently meat-based, some kind of fish sauce is often used in the preparation.

When planning the trip, the details of how I was going to eat were something that gave me a certain amount of anxiety. Even if vegan-friendly dishes are on the menu, the language barrier would make it difficult to ask the wait staff (if there is any) about them. Some people have blogged about how to travel and stick with a strict vegan diet. That's not what I'm doing here. Before we left home, I decided that the best way to approach the situation was to just do the best I can with it.

Fresh vegetables are easy to find in Korea.

While staying at my sister's house in Korea, things weren't so difficult. For meals that were prepared at home, we generally knew what was going into them. But that wasn't always the case. At one of the open-air markets we went to, I bought a few different items from a kimchi stand. When we served them with dinner that night, I found that one of the big piles of seaweed on my plate was saturated with fish oil. I ate it anyway. It freaked me out a little, but I figured that as long as it was there, I may as well have the culinary experience.

Udon!

The scenario would repeat itself to lesser degrees at various restaurants - the udon might be prepared in fish stock; the baked goods may or may not contain dairy or eggs; the rice and vegetable dish might have shredded dried fish as a garnish. I decided that I wasn't going to let that be too much of a hang-up.

Tofu and bean curd vendor in Pyeongtaek

So did I "cheat" on my diet? I wouldn't say so. When people talk about cheating, I imagine it to mean that there's some forbidden thing they just couldn't find the willpower to resist. But in foreign countries, there are some food dishes that are just intrinsic to the culture. I'm not sure it counts as cheating to make a calculated decision to experience that aspect of the journey despite the fact that it doesn't hold up to the standards we would keep while at home. And the classic definition of veganism allows that the best we can do is make every reasonable effort to avoid the exploitation of animals. It doesn't say anything about having your super-powers revoked just because you can't speak the local language.

Anyway, the short of it is: I didn't want to turn the family vacation into a frustrating exercise in foraging for food in a land where the notion of veganism is as foreign to them as their traditions are to me.

Ad for a Vegan phone (yeah, I know...)

That said, I think it went pretty well. We managed to find soy milk at the 7&I convenience stores (7-11 equivalent, to those here in the US).

Japanese soy milk - the picture of the beans is a give-away, but also look for "大豆" (soy) or "豆乳" (soy milk)

They also had steamed rice and seaweed with sesame oil in the refrigerated prepared foods section. At grocery stores we found everything from fresh produce to breakfast cereal to eat in our hotel room that were known to be vegan. When eating out, there were always tofu and vegetable dishes that appeared to be fish-free. And I discovered that an extra helping of steamed rice does wonders for one's sense of satiety.

Oh... did I mention we found some yerba mate at the street market in Pyeongtaek? The vendor had a big jug of it (iced) and was handing out samples. We bought a bag of yerba which came with a pack of paper filter baggies and instructions (in Korean) for preparing it. Not quite the same as sipping it hot from a bombilla, but it was a refreshingly cool twist on something I learned to love during our visit to Argentina a couple of years ago.

Happy is on the road: bicycles in Korea and Japan

Transportation in Korea, at least outside of major cities, was a free-for-all. We saw everything from cars, trucks, and bikes to tractors, 4-wheelers, and gas-powered wheelchairs on the roads. Bicycles were common, but I can imagine riding there to be a risky prospect.

"Happy is on the road" - almost enough to make me start carrying a purse.

Old man with a bicycle at the street market in Osan, South Korea

In Japan, transportation seemed to be much more regulated. Bicycles were much more prominent, and it was interesting to see how they integrated into pedestrian and vehicular traffic. They freely flowed from sidewalks to streets as necessary, and though it felt like it would be easy to get hit by one while walking, it was probably never unsafe.

A typical Japanese town bike at the playground of the Imperial gardens, Kyoto, Japan

Bike parking at a train station

A small shop that sold wire bicycle models. I really wanted to buy one, but resisted the urge to accumulate more useless stuff.

I got the impression that there wasn't much of a bike culture, per se, but that bicycles were just part of the larger culture in general. But in both countries, along with the masses of people using bikes for practical purposes, there was some evidence of an enthusiast camp who rode for fitness and sport. That is to say, they also have roadies in Lycra and mountain bikers pounding down the unpaved trails. And as evidenced above, there were accessories for people who just love bikes.

Nearly all of the town bikes had kick stands attached to the rear hub which allowed the bike to stand freely (visible in the playground picture above). I almost bought one of those to bring home and put on my touring bike. The two-legged stand I have on there now gets in the way of the chain a little bit.

Some bikes also had arms extending from the handle bars with a clamp on the end to hold an umbrella, but it was more common to see people just steering with one hand and holding their umbrella in the other. When not deployed for protection from sun or rain, the handle of the umbrella was hooked onto the seat post while the other end ran back between the wheel and either the kickstand or fender mounts.

It was also not unusual to see people riding around while smoking cigarettes. On town bikes, squeaky chains and brakes were the rule. I'm not sure any of them actually cared, but I wanted to get a big bottle of Triflow and put up a sign advertising free bike lubes.

My observations of Asian bicycle security were interesting, too. The approach seemed to be that, as long as someone couldn't hop on the bike and ride away, the bike was safe. So cable locks were often wrapped between a wheel and the frame, but it was rare to see a bike actually chained to a stationary object. I wish bicycle theft were as small a problem here in the US.

Korea and Japan: a late Yule present

Back during the winter holidays, I didn't get any gifts for anyone. And I mean that literally. Nobody got anything from me. At all.

Part of it was that I didn't make the time to do any shopping. And part of it was that C made sure that the people who matter most got gifts from our family. But mostly I think it was because everyone I would have bought gifts for doesn't need anything. On the contrary, most people I know complain that they want to simplify their lives rather than accumulate more stuff.

But I didn't want to be a Scrooge, so I told my family that my gift to them would be an all-expenses-paid adventure to the destination of their choosing.

I spent the next several hours arguing that Disney Land did not count as an adventure.

This heated debate subsided into the kind of subsurface boiling that lava might do after a violent volcanic eruption. A few days later C turned to me with narrowed eyes and said, "I want to go to Japan." I'd been called to account, and now I'd have to put my money where my mouth is. "Sounds fun," I replied.

Of course we couldn't actually get away until after the school year was up, so we planned the trip for the first two weeks of June. Which means that at the time of writing, I've had just enough time to recover from jet lag.

The trip actually entailed a week in South Korea - visiting my sister, who is stationed there right now - followed by a week in Kyoto. It was probably the best vacation we've had.

We flew out of Denver on a Thursday, caught a connecting flight in Seattle and landed in Seoul on Friday evening. The time zones are such that you lose a day in transit. My brother-in-law picked us up from the airport and took us to their home in Pyeongtaek. Travel is exhausting, and I don't sleep well on planes. So we had just enough time to settle in and hang out for a bit before going to bed at a pretty normal local time. We all got up the next morning feeling more or less adjusted to the new time, which was a pleasant surprise.

The next few days were spent going all over the place, seeing museums, visiting temples, going to amusement parks, walking through markets, and playing at a water park on the US Army post where they work.

One particularly nice coincidence was that their neighborhood, comprised largely of Americans working for the military, held a barbecue one evening while we were there. We enjoyed a sense of community that I haven't felt in a long time. There's a unique bonding that takes place when you're all strangers in a strange land, or so to speak, that doesn't happen much here in suburban US of A.

C and M at a street market, Osan, South Korea

Korean War Memorial, Seoul, South Korea

Korean War Memorial, Seoul, South Korea. A trove for AFV enthusiasts.

Tofu vendor at a street market, Pyeongtaek, South Korea

Traditional dancers and musicians, Korean Folk Village

Buddhist temple, Kwang Duk Sa, South Korea

Kwang Duk Sa, South Korea

T-Express roller coaster, Everland, South Korea

Our week in Korea flew by for me. Before I knew it, we were being shuttled back to Seoul to catch a flight to Osaka. From there we traded in our pre-paid vouchers (acquired from a stateside travel agent) for rail passes and took a JR train to Kyoto. The train station is essentially part of the airport, so it was much less stress than I thought it would be. Still, I'm glad that we insisted on fitting everything into a single suitcase plus backpacks. Shepherding two kids through public transportation is challenging enough without a lot of extra baggage.

Even though we didn't manage to do much more than one destination per day, Kyoto was a whirlwind of palaces, temples, museums, and trains. It was a great choice for first-timers in Japan, as there is so much history there, and the city is quite manageable in size. I think Tokyo probably would have been a bit overwhelming.

Nijo-jo (a shogun's palace), Kyoto, Japan

Tea house, Imperial gardens, Kyoto, Japan

M and some monkeys, Iwatayama Monkey Park near Kyoto, Japan

A train station somewhere north of Kyoto, Japan

Trees at a Buddhist temple (Yasaka?), Kyoto, Japan

Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto, Japan

Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto, Japan

Waterfront, Toba, Japan. We were on an island, so the kids wanted to see some water.

A Katsuya Terada work at the International Manga Museum, Kyoto Japan

Imperial Palace, Kyoto, Japan

It was a great experience being a visitor to such very foreign countries. I mean, everything from the landscapes and architecture to the languages and alphabets were completely new to us. It's really humbling to immerse oneself so thoroughly in the unknown.

The flight home was from Osaka to San Francisco, and from there back to Denver. It all went smoothly enough, but while we once again arrived in the evening and should have gotten a good, on-schedule night's sleep, I was slower to adapt back to Mountain Time. Hopefully tonight I won't wake up again at 03:00 wondering whether I'll be able to coax myself back to sleep for a couple of hours.

There will be more about this trip to come. There was simply too much to encompass in a single blog post.

Thanksgiving Getaway

I'm a little slow blogging about Thanksgiving. So much so that it's already being relegated to my cluttered drawer of memories. But honestly, if I have a choice between blogging and going out and doing something fun, the fun is going to win every time. Sorry, guys.

For quite a while now I've been wanting to get out of town, at least for a couple of days. And even with a four-day weekend, a couple of days were all we had - C had things to do closer to home on Saturday. So we seized on the opportunity to make a quick trip which we had intended to do a couple of months ago but were unable. As so often is the case for me, this inspiration struck me while pushing my mouse around on Google Maps.

Flaming Gorge is an area in northeastern Utah in the Ashley National Forest. The Green River is dammed up to create a large reservoir that spans the border with Wyoming. I didn't know anything about the place, but it looked worth checking out. And Dinosaur National Monument is right in that area, too, so between the two, I expected that the family should be able to find a good time.

I left work early on Wednesday, we hopped in the truck, and headed west on I-70. At Rifle, Colorado, we headed north through the dark on state highways, dodging the occasional deer in the road. Around 10:00 we pulled in to our hotel in Vernal, Utah.

On Thursday we got around relatively early and headed out. Some of the food we had meant to bring from home was forgotten, so we stopped by a grocery store to pick up the ingredients for our Thanksgiving feast - PB&J sandwiches!

The drive from Vernal to Flaming Gorge winds through hills full of geologic and paleontologic interest. There were several road-side signs describing the kinds of fossils found in each area, much of which had formerly been a prehistoric coastline. Most of the amenities at the Gorge were closed for the season, but that was okay with us. Had we planned on camping, it would have been more of a problem. We drove across the dam and around the reservoir, taking in some scenery.

Flaming Gorge dam

Flaming Gorge reservoir

Worrying that any more time in the truck would result in a munchkin mutiny, we turned back to the main road and parked at the Swett Ranch trail head. By that time, the sun had warmed things up as much as it was going to, but it was still quite cool. So we bundled up, grabbed our packs, and went for a hike down one of the forest service roads. Lots more deer in the area.

F, M, and C hiking down a forest service road

Swett Ranch is situated in the valley between the highway and the reservoir. It was a picturesque setting.

Swett Ranch

A stand of aspen near Swett Ranch

M with sticks, wielding his trekking pole

F, who isn't so much into sticks

We found some rocks just off the trail where we could sit and have our lunch. Then, back to the trail head. After relaxing in the hotel room for a little bit, we went down and played in the swimming pool for a while. There weren't many restaurants open that evening, so supper was of the microwaveable variety supplied by the grocery store, eaten in our room at whatever tables and floor space we could make work.

Friday, after breakfast, we packed most of our stuff and then headed back to the pool. Then back on the road. The internet told us that the visitor's center on the Colorado side of Dinosaur National Monument was closed for the season. So we decided to make for the Utah side instead. A quick glance at the map told me that a non-highway route should be straight-forward, but I missed a turn and we ended up taking a long, very pretty drive to a dead end at a fish hatchery at Jones Hole. Backtrack and take the highway. Lose a couple of hours. No big deal.

Some cliffs near Jones Hole, UT

There are hourly tours to a dinosaur fossil quarry from the visitor's center. This quarry turns out to be an ancient river bed which was lifted up and turned about 70 degrees. The man who discovered and excavated it arranged for the bones to be left in place and a structure erected over it, so you get to see everything preserved as it was embedded in the earth millions of years ago. I think the ranger said there are some 1500 fossils in this wall.

Dinosaur quarry

F posing near an allosaurus skeleton (cast)

You can touch some of the fossils

We returned home by the same route we took on Wednesday, and much on the same schedule. We were back to I-70 just after sundown, so I was able to see the deer in the road much better this time. We were kind of burned out on listening to music, so we listened to a few episodes of the Dirtbag Diaries which were cached on my phone. We got home at 10:00, happy to sleep in our own beds again. Which is to say, we were happy for the kids to each have their own beds - those two trying to share a bed in the same room as C and me just doesn't work very well.

So it was a bit of a whirlwind getaway, but it was just what I needed. I got to spend Thanksgiving with two of the things I'm most grateful for: my family and the beauty of nature. And we got a chance to show the kids that experience is more valuable than unnecessarily large meals. As far as adventure goes, it may seem pretty pedestrian, but it was possibly the best Thanksgiving I've ever had.

I have no idea.

A few days of Big Apple

Last night I got back from a few days in NYC. Before I left, F asked me if there were any climbing gyms in New York. "Yeah," I responded, "New York has a lot of everything except wide-open spaces and mountains." One of the things they have a lot of that I love the most is vegan restaurants.

Right after I checked into my hotel on Tuesday night, I headed over to Terri for supper. It's become a tradition of mine to eat there the first night I'm in town. Great-tasting vegan fast food always seems to hit the spot after half a day of airports, jets, and taxis.

The next night a coworker and I met up with a former colleague at Han Gawi, a vegan Korean restaurant. I'd been wanting to go there for a while, but it wasn't somewhere that I really wanted to go by myself. The food and atmosphere were both great.

Thursday was my last night in town, and I was feeling kind of burned out on being around so many people. So I was tempted to just hit the salad bar at Whole Foods and eat in my hotel room. But that would have left me with an evening of staring at the internet in hopes that it could alleviate my boredom. So instead I coaxed myself into walking down to Gingersnap Organics. I first heard about this place from Choosing Raw and have been wanting to check it out. But it's a little out of the way, and I was reluctant to try to drag omni' coworkers to a raw vegan place. So this was a perfect time to go by myself, and it did not disappoint. Nori rolls, a burger, and the most amazing coconut cream pie ever!

While I wasn't working or eating, I mostly spent my time reading and listening to the Enormocast. That's a fairly new podcast about climbing that I recently came across, and I'm catching up on all the episodes dating back to December of last year.

If you're even just a little bit into climbing, go check it out now. I'll wait right here for you.

I decided to send Chris Kalous, the producer/host of the show, an email to let him know that I'm enjoying it. I'm not sure I can really even call myself a climber at this point (almost all of my climbing so far has been in gyms), but I like having these virtual connections to the community. It was a very short exchange, but it caused me to reflect on a few things. And I reached the conclusion that I need to stop making excuses and letting my shyness hold me back from doing something I really want to do. So ignoring the fact that I have almost no free time in my schedule, I headed over to Mountain Project and decided to find myself a climbing partner. So hopefully I'll have rock-climbing stories to tell in the near future.

While I was packing for the trip, I grabbed two small paperbacks off my bookshelf to take with me. One was a Michael Moorcock novel - The War Hound and the World's Pain - that I picked up at a thrift store and hadn't read yet. It was a pretty good twist on the old Grail Quest theme. The other was Neal Stephenson's Zodiac, which I haven't read in ages. So it's been a real treat revisiting that one. One quote that struck me in particular, and belongs here on SPL, is this passage on riding a bicycle at night:

My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That's why I don't even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe -- to see you, and to give a fuck -- you've already blown it.

Cynical, but classic Stephenson Attitude. Love it.

A Week on the AT

Some time last year I received a phone call from my father. My nephew S and he were driving around in North Carolina doing some sight-seeing in the Appalachians, and they had hiked to the top of one of the balds [1] out there. "You and S ought to come out here and do some hiking on the Appalachian Trail," he said.

"I'm in!" (I don't take a lot of convincing when it comes to invitations to adventure.)

I spent the winter doing research and planning the trip. S is attending university in Kentucky, so in addition to taking the weather into consideration, we had to schedule a time when he would not be in class. The break between Spring and Summer semesters offered the perfect time to make it happen.

My dad offered to provide logistics, ferrying us to the trail, after which he would stay in the town of Hot Springs, NC - at least until after we passed through - and then pick us up when we were done.

The goal was to spend one week on the trail, hoping to covering about 100 miles from Waterville School Road to Erwin, TN. Based on the mileage I was covering on my day hikes, that sounded attainable. Circumstances didn't entirely allow for it, but we did 77 miles (124 km), which we felt was pretty good. We put in on Sunday, May 20th, 2012, and left the trail on Saturday, May 26th.

Day 1: S and J, about to set out from Waterville School Road

This was my longest backpacking trip to date, and the first for S. It was absolutely amazing, and I think we both came away with a lot of good knowledge and experience and the inspiration to do more of it. A recount of the hike would be tedious, but here are a few things that I learned along the way.

The AT is a community

Upon setting foot on the trail, we were instantly immersed in a community of hikers. There were people from all parts of the country, from all walks of life, and with all sorts of goals. But we were bound together by the thread of the trail which wound its way through the forests and over the mountains of the Appalachians.

The AT must be one of the most heavily-traveled backcountry trails in the nation. We frequently hiked for several hours without seeing anyone, but there were always a few neighbors when we stopped at shelters for the night. We frequently found ourselves camping with the same folks for two or three nights in a row.

I've heard people say that they would enjoy hiking the AT, but would be unwilling to do it alone. My experience was that you're never really alone out there. They say that if you run into any kind of trouble, the best piece of equipment you can have is a deck of cards. That way you can keep yourself entertained while waiting for the next passer-by.

Day 5: A lush view from White Rock Cliff

Shelters are nice

The AT has shelters set up every 5 to 8 miles or so for housing hikers. We opted not to actually sleep in any of them, but we mostly camped next to them. The shelters of the AT are notorious for being visited by mice, and they lack any kind of shield from insects. But they have some nice peripheral features such as water sources, privies, picnic tables, and cables for suspending food out of reach of the local wildlife [2]. And they all had sites for pitching tents.

Day 3: Early morning at our camp site at Walnut Mountain Shelter

The only night we slept at an isolated camp site was on day 4. We had planned to bypass Spring Mountain shelter to get in a few extra miles, but found ourselves in a torrential downpour shortly after doing so. Had we known that it would rain that hard, we would have stayed in the shelter.

Go light

I've read plenty of times that carrying less weight will do more for your enjoyment of a backpacking trip than could be gained from most extra recreational items you might want to bring. This proved to be more true than I'd imagined. Especially with my plantar fasciitis giving me grief.

We heard many tales of through-hikers who had to jettison gear in the first days of their hike. One guy said he had to give a nice fishing rod away to somebody at a trail head parking lot. Another said he was given a samurai sword in exchange for cigarettes on some Georgia mountain top. Fortunately, meeting Dad in Hot Springs at the end of day 3 gave us an opportunity to drop some weight without losing anything permanently.

Day 4: Hot Springs, NC, and the French Broad River

Having the official AT map and guide book for our area was essential. But if I'd been thinking ahead, I would have transcribed or photo-copied the pages from the guide book for the sections we were hiking and left the book itself at home. That would have saved a fair amount of weight and bulk.

I hit the trail with three different knives! I had my Swiss Army pocketknife, a Leatherman, and a larger camp/bushcraft knife. When we met up with my dad in Hot Springs, I left all but the pocketknife with him. I would gladly have traded my 4-piece eating/cooking utensil set for one titanium spork. I also started out with a rain jacket, rain pants, and a warm puffy jacket. After HS, I just carried the rain jacket and used it during the chilly hours of the morning.

My DSLR camera didn't make the cut either. Photos from the second half of the trip were taken with my phone. Incidentally, I took more pictures that way than I did with the big camera simply because it was more convenient. A good compact point-and-shoot would have been the best option.

I can't go camping (nor otherwise get to sleep) without a book to read. This time it was book 1 of The Mongoliad, a collaborative work by several authors, including Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear. By the time I got home, I was well on my way to finishing it. But much of that progress was made on the return flight. I could have gotten by with a much smaller, lighter book on the trail.

Do your homework

As a vegan, I've become accustomed to mistrusting the availability of food at most small stores and restaurants. So I hit the trail with a full week's worth of food in my pack. It was by far the heaviest part of my load. If I'd known more about Hot Springs, I could have carried far less and resupplied half-way through the hike. Hot Springs has a Dollar General store with a good enough selection for most hikers. And there is a store which specializes in backpacking food where I could have gotten additional vegan items.

With a bit of research, I could probably also have figured out that much of the sun protection equipment I had with me was superfluous. I know it's part of the 10 Essentials, but the hat, sunglasses, and sunblock were all unnecessary beneath the canopy of trees that shades the vast majority of the miles through this region.

Tap water sucks

I'm not usually a water snob. And to be honest, my sense of smell and taste are usually pretty dull. But after a week without carbon monoxide or Sriracha, a week of drawing water from mountain streams and springs, civilization smelled pretty bad. Granted, I wasn't smelling like a bouquet of flowers, but at least it was a natural smell. After getting to a hotel room and showering, I was walking around in this choking cloud of perfumed soap fumes that I could almost see.

And the tap water... I can't believe how bad it was. It smelled of chlorine and made my tongue and the roof of my mouth go numb. 

Good stories don't always happen on the trail

Though he never set foot on the trail, my dad came away from the trip with plenty of good experiences and stories as well.

Within a few minutes of being on the trail, a woman passed by us going the opposite direction with her arm in a makeshift sling. The man with her said he believed her wrist was either broken or badly sprained. They were making for the Standing Bear hostel just up the road from where we were dropped off. My father had gone up there to kill some time, so he ended up giving her a ride to the nearest hospital, some 30 miles away.

During his time in Hot Springs, Dad hung out at the diner and other hiker haunts, talked to folks who were passing through, and gave some guys a ride when they needed it. He thoroughly enjoyed himself. And he also took in a soak in the mineral springs for which the town is named, followed by a massage.

----

[1] In the Appalachians, a bald is a mountain top whose summit is clear of trees. This isn't due to elevation, as would be the case here in the Rockies, but the exact cause isn't well understood. We saw signage which suggested it was done by Indians to aid in their hunting. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_balds

[2] The Walnut Mountain shelter lacked a picnic table, and the privy was full to the point of unusability. Jerry Cabin Shelter had no privy. All of the other shelters we stayed at had those features.

Argentine Adventure, Part 3: Hotels and Language

This post will cover a couple of different topics, since I don't have a whole lot to say about either of them.

Hotels

As mentioned in an earlier post, in Buenos Aires we stayed at the Hilton in the Puerto Madero district. This area used to be where cargo ships docked and exchanged loads. There had been cranes and warehouses along the waterfront at one time. Some of that remains - the cranes are now scenic features - but Puerto Madero is now mostly an upscale area with condos, offices, and nice restaurants (mostly catering to the carnivorous crowd).

The Hilton is located just off the water front. The staff there were very friendly, helpful, and all spoke very good English. The lobby is lovely, and the restaurant was pretty good. I completed a survey after we got home and suggested that they could offer more vegan fare. To my surprise, I got a response from them saying that they would be looking into adding vegan items to their menu.

There is a nice exercise room in the hotel, but when weather permits, I'm much happier running outdoors so I can explore my surroundings. While the early spring mornings were quite brisk, nothing prevented me from doing just that. So I didn't get to see more of those facilities than the view through the windows afforded.

It costs extra to use the internet at the hotel, which I thought was a little bit chincy. We ate breakfast in the hotel each morning, and it was quite good. But after staying at Holiday Inn Express hotels so often, it didn't occur to me that it was not included in the price of the room. But these are small issues.

The only reason we chose to stay at the Hilton was because of a special corporate rate I got through my company, but our experience there was such that I'd be happy stay there again.

We stayed at Hotel Rosario when we were in that city. I chose it because it within reasonable walking distance from the office. It is close enough the Río Paraná to go there for a run. It is also conveniently located near the Cordoba pedestrian mall. From what I've been told, Argentina isn't well served by online retailers, and I saw no evidence of the kinds of major discount stores that we have in the US. So the shops and streets along Cordoba were always bustling.

M. playing with the curtains at Hotel Rosario

This hotel and its accommodations were much humbler than the Hilton's. But it does have free internet access and a complimentary breakfast buffet. The latter is a simple affair, with breads, meat and cheese, and your choice of tea or coffee. But we were pretty content with the food, nonetheless.

F. having breakfast at Hotel Rosario

Rosario is a city of historical importance to Argentina, most famously because it witnessed the first raising of the Argentine flag. But it is visited by fewer tourists than Bs As, though that number is growing in recent years. As such, there are fewer English speakers in Rosario. That includes the hotel staff, waitresses, and cab drivers. But even my meager Spanish skills were enough to get by without too much trouble.

Language

What knowledge I have of the Spanish language I owe to two years of studying Castelian Spanish in high school (Hi, Ms. M!). And that remained largely unused until we went on this trip. The strain of Spanish spoken in Argentina is heavily influenced by the large population of Italians. I don't know the language well enough to make many intelligent contrasts, but there were a few things that struck me as interesting.

When saying "good morning," I always heard the singular "buen día" rather than the plural "buenos días" which I was used to hearing. Now that I think about it, the singular makes much more sense. I am told, however, that both forms are used. To say "goodbye," the Argentines say "chau."

The pronunciation of 'll' and 'y' are different in Argentina (and other parts of South America). Except at the end of a word, they make a 'zh' or 'j' kind of sound. When a coworker was teaching me how to drink from a maté, what he said sounded like "zherba maté" rather than "yerba maté."

The consensus there seems to be that Castelian Spanish, as it is now spoken, is a bit silly. I was told that they attempt to keep the language too pure - for example, calling a computer mouse a ratón, which made no sense to my Argentinian colleagues. "It's not a ratón, it's a mouse," they said.

Mexican Spanish, they said, was the most universal. They said that all of the movies with a dubbed Spanish audio track used Mexican accents and dialect.

Argentine Adventure, Part 2: Eating

Bodegon Criollo, Bs.As. (non-vegan)

I was a little worried about how well I would be able to deal with the food in Argentina. It is a nation known for its love of meat, and what I'd read about vegetarianism and veganism there did not make me feel very optimistic. It turned out much better than I had expected. With some planning and searching, I was able to make out alright. And we had a few very good vegan dining experiences.

One thing that's worth knowing is that restaurants in Argentina keep different hours than what I'm accustom to in the US. Most restaurants open for lunch, but then close for the afternoon and reopen around 7 or 8 p.m. for supper. That's a later meal-time than we usually have with the kids, but then, we were also three hours ahead of Colorado time, so our schedules were kind of out of whack anyway.

Food is less expensive in Argentina than it is here in the States. Entrees at good restaurants were typically in the neighborhood of $50 or $60 AR, which at current exchange rates is under $15 USD. Some of the main dishes were a little more expensive, but at non-vegan restaurants, I wasn't looking at those very much. Though tap water was generally potable, we didn't eat anywhere that served it. If you ask for water, you buy a bottle or two for the table.

On nights where we couldn't make the restaurant hours work, we stopped by supermarkets and had improvised picnics in the hotel room. Without a means of heating food, these meals were a little tricky and less than stellar. But it worked out pretty well.

On the recommendation from my coworkers, I picked up some crackers and cookies made by Granix, an Argentine company that makes healthy grain-based products. They feature ingredients like chia and flax (lino in Spanish). The crackers, paired with a soy cheese spread that I found at the supermarket, were very good.

These are some of the vegan or vegetarian restaurants that we visited:

BIO - a small, all-organic bistro in Buenos Aires. We ate here on our first night in town. It was pretty far from our hotel, but we loved it. The food was great, and the staff were very friendly. Either we arrived a bit early, or the neighborhood is a bit sketchy. They kept the door locked while we were there.

BIO, Buenos Aires

Sana Sana - my coworkers in Rosario took me here for lunch one day. It's another small venue with nice patio seating in a residential area. I had a really good stir-fry, or wok, as you'll see it listed on the menu.

Rotiseria Vegetariana - an Asian vegetarian take-out buffet in Rosario. (I don't remember exactly where this was, and the name is fairly generic.) This provided one of our hotel room picnics, though the food would have been much better if we'd been able to heat it up.

Rotiseria Vegetariana, Rosario

Verde Te Que Quiero Verde - on the upper level of the Palace Garden shopping center on Rosario's Cordoba pedestrian mall.

Granix - an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet by the company that made the afore-mentioned crackers. In Buenos Aires, it's in a shopping center off of Florida street. I had lunch here with coworkers on our last day in town.

Picnic - vegan fast food. We didn't actually get to eat here. It's in a banking district where everything is closed on Sundays, which is when we tried to go. It's essentially across the street from Granix.

I actually saw a few signs that there is a healthy population of Vegan militants in the area. On the bus ride to Rosario, I saw a building on the road-side with "Meat is Murder" spray-painted on the wall. And I saw two different "Go Vegan" graffiti in Rosario.

Go Vegan!

So while I expect that Argentina will continue to be famous for its beef and barbecue traditions, it's definitely a place where a determined vegan can have a good time and enjoy some wonderful meals.