Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the IGDA, recently posted about his experience at the Nordic Game Conference. It looks like it had an amazing array of speakers.
However I have to admit, one of the things I got most excited about in his blog post was this building, known as the “Turning Torso”. Wow!
In Buenos Aires we saw a lot of pretty amazing graffiti. Buenos Aires appears like a first-world city that has just gotten a bit run-down over time, I must admit that I thought it would be much less modern than it is! Not sure why. 
The huge amount of graffiti is part of what gave it that lived-in kind of run-down feeling. So I ended up taking a lot of pictures of graffiti. I think this one is my favorite.
Just a few Mendoza pictures for now… this was where we attended the “Masters of Food & Wine” event. Argentina is well known for its Malbec-based wines, which were prominently featured at the event. They go well with steak, something else Argentina does very well!
At Achaval-Ferrer winery, the owner (Ferrer) gave us “the long walking tour” around his Bella Vista vineyard. He told us a lot about how they grow the grapes for their wine – I had no idea the extent to which wine makers micro-manage their vineyards. It’s pretty amazing stuff!
The view from Catena Zapata was breathtaking. The winery itself is shaped like an ancient Mayan pyramid (I’m serious!) From the balcony you can see the vineyards, the Andes… wow.
We spent our last evening in Argentina back in Buenos Aires. We stayed in a beautiful hotel. The staircase reminded me of a Mandelbrot…
In the evening we attended a huuuuge tango show; it included an 8-piece band and about 15 dancers. The show turned out to be really fun; so was the people watching! But they sure pack people in there… sorry for the low-light picture, it was just too amusing to ignore.
These few pictures can’t adequately portray the feeling of Argentina. That’s something I keep thinking about. How can one adequately represent a place via words, or pictures, or even simple videos? While I work on that problem, I recommend you hop on a plane and travel somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.
MB and I got back to San Francisco this morning… the last leg of our trip, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, was more of an adventure than I would have liked. But it did confirm for me that most people are generally nice people when pressed – I’ll tell that story later tonight, after work, and put up some more pictures. What a trip though!
MB and I travelled to Mendoza yesterday to enjoy the Masters of Food & Wine conference… so far we’re having a ton of fun! These first two pictures are from Buenos Aires though.
Fancy Recoleta graves…
Huge metal flower!
We toured a Trapiche vineyard…
And later, tasted the final product over lunch!
