Wednesday, January 29 - Montevideo, Uruguay

 We had a tour scheduled that included a city highlights tour then a meat and beer pairing, but we decided we'd rather do a similar one that skipped the meat part and had a beer tasting and visit to a mercado (market) instead.  They were full, but we went down to see if there were any cancellations, and lo and behold, there were 2 seats now available.  Turns out it was our friends Bob and Bo who turned in their tickets a little while before, so lucky us.

We've been here before but this tour took us to different places.  We still think this is a very nice place.  Our guide, Sebastian, is a native.  He said you pronounce it oo-ra-way, with a slight guttural on the last syllable.  The whole country is only around 3 million and half of them live here.  It's a modern, clean city.

The Parliament building.  A country of 3 million has 99 Representatives and 30 Senators.  Our guide thought that was a bit excessive.

We couldn't go inside, but they had some picture displays outside of some of the inside rooms.  It looks beautiful.

The Mercado was very nicely done.

One of the dozens of stores with attractive displays

A dozen eggs was priced at $4 a dozen.  About like home, but I don't think they have the avian flu here as an excuse.

The obligatory food court, but no American brands, thank goodness.

A sculpture cast in Italy since there were no foundries here large enough.  Mussolini liked it and wanted to buy it, but the sculptor said it had been paid for by Uruguay, so Mussolini borrowed it for a few months before letting it go to Uruguay.  The sculptor lived to tell the tale.

One of many attractive apartment buildings.

The brewery, Mist, where we had out tasting.  They had 40 beers on tap.  We tasted 4.

A nice snack to go with the beer samples.

The Salvo Palace built by 3 Italian brothers to be a hotel in 1923.  That didn't work out and it is now a mix of offices and private residences.

I wasn't sure if this was real, but according to the DOJ website, it is.

The weather was more comfortable today with temps around 80 degrees.  We mostly hung around the cabin in the afternoon and then went to Trivia with Bob and Bo.  Still no Roger - guess his head cold hasn't improved enough to be around others.  Today was much harder so we only got 8/15, but the highest score was 11 so we didn't feel too bad.  If it ever comes up, a giraffe's tongue is blue, not black.  I knew that, but was outvoted.

Sette Mari had their good veal chop parmigiana so we went there to share one.  It was still light so we had nice views of the city while we ate.

We were able to have another Zoom call with friends and my sister and BIL with no problems again.  Pretty neat.