Buenos Aires, Part Deux: Uruguay

I realize that Uruguay is not in Buenos Aires, but I wanted to be consistent with my titles.

Wednesday, we got up really early, said goodbye to the breakfast buffet of champions, and headed to the ferry.  It was a big ferry.

According to Fernando at my Spanish school, the Rio Negro is the widest river in the world. I have not yet googled to confirm.  It was really wide though. You can’t see either side from the middle.

Did you know that in Spanish they use Google as a verb too? Googlear. Yo googleo. Me gusta.

First stop, Colonia de Sacramento, my new favorite place on the planet. Sadly, we did not suspect we would like it so much, and thus were only there for a couple of hours. It was beautiful. And there was a tree full of parrots.

See that little green speck?? Its a parrot. Or some brightly colored bird that looks like a parrot. The tree was full of them!

According to Lonely Planet, Colonia was founded by the Portuguese to smuggle stuff to Buenos Aires but then quickly taken over by the Spanish. So there are lots of colonial buildings in varying states of ruin.

This is the old pirate port. We sat there and looked at the water for a long time. And the boats with funny names.

We saw the town square...

 

...and the church...

...and an old looking street...

...And some nice little plazas with pretty colored buildings...

...and cultural icons. This is Mafalda. She’s from a very famous eponymous Argentinean comic strip. She’s sassy and political. And six years old. I haven’t mentioned Mafalda before because the comics are too small to take adequate pictures of, but she is my new favorite and I bought the giant Todo Mafalda book as my Argentina souvenir. It contains every single Mafalda comic ever written. I tried to buy a smaller book in English to bring home, but I read some of it and there’s a lot lost in translation. Like to the point of the jokes being incomprehensible.  This is the biggest Mafalda comic I’ve seen so far, so I had to put it in.  It says "Life is beautiful! The bad thing is that many people confuse beautiful with easy."  She's a very wise 6 year old.

The other girl is named Susanita. Her dream in life is to get married and have children (the comic was written in the 70s). Mafalda's dream in life is to work for the UN. Conflict ensues.

In my favorite strip, Susanita says, "I want to grow up and own many dresses!" And then Mafalda says, "I want to grow up and have lots of culture!" And then Susanita says, "Why would you want that? If you walk through the street without culture you won't get arrested, but you will if you walk through the street without clothes!" And then Mafalda punches her in the face.

We ate at a restaurant called Drugstore. The seafood was excellent. Well, excellent relative to Bariloche. I think my standards are low right now.

It was a pretty hip little place. That car has seating inside. It looked uncomfortable though.

We made more dog friends. We named this one Sucio. That means Dirty. He lived up to his name. 

 

This dog stared at this hole for, I kid you not, at least 45 minutes. From before we ordered until we left. The level of concentration is remarkable.  I really want to know whats in there.

After lunch, we got on a bus to Montevideo. Nap time!

Montevideo was not as awesome as Colonia, but pretty awesome nathless*.

(*Please ask Neil or Kris Thomas about this word. Also, don’t use fake words around your children when they are learning how to speak. They won’t find out they are fake until high school when someone asks them what on earth they are talking about.)

We saw a giant flag...

...and a giant cross. Apparently the Pope came here...

...and another obelisk. Montevideo’s is a lot smaller though...

We didn’t book a hostel in advance, but the first one we went to had room for us, which was lucky because it was super sweet! I think it used to be apartments or something. It had a balcony, and from there we could see the Teatro Solis, Montevideo’s main theater. And it was on the street with all the bars and restaurants in Lonely Planet. This is the view from the balcony.

Montevideo had its own version of Calle Florida.  We walked all the way down it to the port.

 Then on the way back we went by the Mercado del Puerto, which means “building with a bunch of high-end seafood restaurants.”

 

Then we walked through some plazas. The big horse guy is in Plaza Independencia, right next to our hostel and Teatro Solis. Lonely Planet says he sits on top of a mausoleum.

After we finished walking around, it was only 8. Which is WAY too early to eat dinner. So we went to a bar to waste some time until we could get away with showing up at a restaurant. The bar we chose happened to be Lord of the Rings themed. SWEET.  And it actually seemed like a place cool people hang out.  I'm liking Uruguay better and better.

I had rack of lamb for dinner. It was super duper cheap. Everything in Uruguay was super cheap. Yay favorable exchange rate.

So much meat. All the time.

Also interesting, they use horse carts to pick up trash instead of garbage trucks. I didn’t take a picture though because I thought it was kind of rude. And I felt sad for the horses.

In the morning we went to the Museo Torres Garcia, which we liked very much.  I couldn’t take pictures though.

Then we walked all the way back to the bus station, which took about an hour and a half, but we didn’t want to take out any Uruguayan pesos just to use the bus.  We did it when we first arrived too. It was good for us.

Stay tuned for Buenos Aires, Part Three: Return to Buenos Aires!!!

Chau!