Lunch in el Mercado del PuertoWe got to Montevideo around 10:30 am – two hours late! It turns out the bridge from Montevideo to Buenos Aires is shut down because Buenos Aires is protesting the fact that Montevideo is building paper factories that are polluting Río de la Plata (which they share as a border).
When we got there, Shino and I grabbed a taxi to the hostel. It cost 85 PESOS! We were freaking out, until we realized that it was pesos URUGUAYOS. One peso argentino is worth 7 pesos uruguayos. (And one American dollar is worth 25 pesos uruguayos!) So the money was very confusing this weekend, because everything seems really expensive until you convert it. And we all know how great I am at dividing by seven in my head... Yeah.
The hostel, Hostel International Ciudad Vieja, was amazing! It was right in the heart of the historic district. We couldn’t check in until 12:30 pm, so we walked one block up to Plaza Matriz, where they have an artisan fair / flea market on the weekends.
Then we checked into hostel and went to the Puerto del Mercado (Port Market) for lunch. It’s a big warehouse full of restaurants in the port district. It was incredible! There were probably 25 open-air asado restaurants, all grouped together inside this warehouse. It smelled absolutely amazing. We sat at the bar of one of the restaurants, right next to the grill. We made friends with a guy, probably in his 30’s, from Buenos Aires who has a brother in Córdoba. We also made friends with an older couple, probably in their late 40’s. The man was the nephew of the lady who owns the grill! So we got to try “medio y medio” – an Uruguayan “wine” that has either half sweet and half dry wine, or half wine and half wine cooler. It was really delicious! We also tried a dessert that’s specific to Uruguay that has a graham cracker base, then a layer of sweet cream cheese filling, topped off with an orange glaze mixed with cookie crumbs. It was so yummy!
After lunch, we walked around the city a little bit, and then went back to the hostel to catch a nap. Around 9:30 pm, we got up to eat dinner. They were having an asado at the hostel, so we decided to eat there. We sat with four friends from Buenos Aires – three guys and a girl, all probably in their late 20’s. They were really cool.
After that, we hung out at the hostel. A few of the guys knew how to play guitar, including one of the guys from Buenos Aires, a guy named Mike from California, and a guy from London named David. There were three or four British guys there, which was really fun. I love their accent! We also met a few girls who are studying in Buenos Aires – they are coming to visit Córdoba in a few weeks, so hopefully we will be able to get together with them again.
We hung out, talked, and sang songs until around 2:00 am, when we finally went to bed.
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