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| Home Exchange in Mexico |
When my partner and I travel, where it makes sense, we try and find an apartment or home exchange property with a nice kitchen where I can prepare some of our meals using the freshest seasonal ingredients.
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| Home swap Puerto Vallarta |
This past holiday season, for two weeks we stayed at an excellent IVHE.com home swap in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Being able to self-cater there helped us stay healthier during our sojourn: dining out in restaurants and hotels for all breakfasts, lunches and dinners, quickly add up to a lot of calories! Further, having a great kitchen space in our Vallarta vacation home exchange gave me an opportunity to explore my interests in culinary-cultural experimentation. Cooking in another country, with totally different ingredients, is a challenge that I enjoy with gusto. Of course, having previous Mexican travels and a Tlaxcala-based weeklong cooking class experience under my belt, really helped me to make the most out of amazing culinary opportunities I found exploring Vallarta’s wonderful food markets and gourmet shops. If you like Mexican cuisine and cookery, Vallarta is the place in Mexico to cook your heart out. Amazingly ingredients are all there, just waiting for you!
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| Join IVHE to stay here! |
Here are some of my favourite markets and shops to source great ingredients and products in Vallarta:
Mercado ‘5 de Diciembre’
Best market in town, with excellent produce and seafood. A popular tortilleria is on site to stock up on all sorts of tortilla, soft, baked or fried. Take a taxi to this market, ask driver to wait, do your shopping, then get dropped off back at your pad. I recommend visiting this market earlier rather than later, arriving around 9:00 a.m. Our favourite fishmongers are at ‘Pescaderia La Morena’, selling red snapper, black sea bream, and shrimps and prawns of all sizes.
Old Town Farmers Market- Tianguis Cultural (www.oldtownfm.com)
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| Love home swapping! |
Excellent farmer’s market every Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. All sorts of vendors set up shop here, featuring local growers, and artisan food makers selling homemade breads, tamales, empanadas, pies, B.B.Q. meats, dairy products, pickles, preserves and so on.
Pollo Feliz (www.pollofeliztepic.com)
A convenient B.B.Q. chicken take-out shop where you can order a quarter, half or whole chicken, beautifully grilled. Order a whole chicken or more, and they throw in extras like a grilled jalapeño and green bell pepper, plus, nice fresh homemade tomato sauce.
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| Vacation Home Exchange information |
Temperature controlled wine shop where you can purchase higher quality wines than what is available in supermarkets and liquor stores in Vallarta. Portfolio features wines from Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, with a decent collection of Champagne, Prosecco and other sparkling wines. Another plus: this wine shop is located in the upmarket ‘Los Mercados’ gourmet shopping gallery housing a nice butchery, bakery and produce sections, equaling a convenient one-stop shopping experience.
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| Our property is Stratford Ontario |
Lastly, there are many excellent restaurants in Vallarta, and these were our favourites:
· EL ARRAYAN (http://elarrayan.com.mx/)
· EL DORADO (www.eldoradopv.com/)
· LA LECHE (www.lalecherestaurant.com)
· LA PALAPA (www.lapalapapv.com)
· NO WAY JOSE! (http://nowayjosemx.com/)
· RED CABBAGE (http://redcabbagepv.com/)
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| Our Kitchen in Stratford Ontario |
Home swap /trade with us, and we will include Complimentary lunch or dinner inside our restaurant Rundles, including
very interesting and local Ontario wines to pair with your meal and
airport transfer included*
* (May 25th thru September 29th, 2012.) We look forward to hosting you!
To find out more about luxury home swap /vacation house exchange contact me at suzie@ivhe.com
Love home swap's and try IVHE.com now with a 1 years free trial and you too will be enjoying vacations like the above! Remember to use BL10 in the promo box for your free year. Offer ends 15th March 2012, no other offer can be used in conjunction with this one.