Montevideo, Uruguay

Hola,
We continue to explore our surroundings. A few days ago, we took the bus (the right one this time!) to the biggest city in Uruguay.... Montevideo. It's about 90 min. from Piriapolis by bus. The views from the window of our COT bus varied from seaside (well, Rio de la Plata) to pastoral.

Uruguay has about 3.7 million people. Montevideo probably has 1 million of the 3 million. It's an old city with lovely architecture; an old colonial city. It reminded us of Paris... albeit a very poor-run-down teeny-tiny Paris! Can't say that it was neat and tidy like Paris, Buenos Aires or Santiago. Montevideo needs to clean up the graffiti, the trash, and fix up some of those beautiful old buildings. Considering that Uruguay is a poor country in comparison to Argentina and Chile, I'm not sure when any of the fixing up will take place.

Although we weren't that keen on Montevideo, we are enjoying Piriapolis. Big cities have never been our style, so that could be part of the problem with Montevideo. Plus, we did not see that much of the city since we were only there for 5 hours.

We did find a great restaurant for lunch. It was highly recommended in the Moon guide book. It was a parrilla, a grill restaurant. They grill meats over and open flame (see picture). We shared the most-delicious steak we've ever had. The only seasoning was pepper. It melted in our mouths. Yummy! Along with it, we enjoyed what they call a mixto salad... lettuce, tomato and onion(lots of onion).

The other pictures show a few of the sights we saw.
The Castaways,
Mary and Bob