Montevideo in 1 Metaphor and 2 Photos

All these vegetables may have since been eaten, but the news is new!

Its a beautiful city, with an old-port pearl inside the oyster of a typical South American urban landscape, though like everything in Uruguay, smaller. Besides the requisite 'first church' and 'exact replica of the French theater house' that every Southern Cone city seems to have, the port is packed with Belle Epoque style palaces interspersed with slightly later Art Deco that blends in perfectly.

This beautiful and agéd old port has lead us to one major metaphorical conclusion: Montevideo is the Montreal of South America.
Say it: MMMontreal,
MMMontevideo.

Just like tourists in Montreal, we have basically just been walking around and taking pictures of each other taking pictures of grey stone buildings of impressive age.
Like Montreal, we are on a huge river and the wind whips through the city incredibly. We wanted cold, but this is a little more Canadian than we bargined for! And when shutter fingers start to tremble, what do we drink? Hot Chocolate!

I went out for the famous steak dinner last night (poor Renata had to watch me devour it) and tonight we are going to a concert of a local rock band, then we are off at 315 tomorrow afternoon. The airport was so small we actually disembarked on the tarmac, which is so glamorous. I ran down the stairs so that I could turn and take a picture of Renata in her Jackie O sunglasses. Also glamorous was the official blue and gold United States of America airplane parked next to our plane- the secretary of something was visiting from Washington to talk about buying more steak and wine in exchange for old fighter jets. (kidding!)

On the whole we are excited to get back to Brazil- people here are, shall we say, more European than Brazilians, and we miss the smiles and the non-brown-wool items of clothing. Not to mention that perhaps the most European thing here is the hotel breakfast- ham, cheese, rolls, apples (not a papaya in sight, but ohhh the dulce de leche!)

In truth, too much of our impression may have been formed by an encounter today where a used-book vendor in a plaza accused us of stealing a book when I put my camera in Renata's purse. We opened it up for her inspection, but she didn't even apologize. Bitch!

We walked away miffed, an emotion that was instantly transformed when we bought a hand-knit sweater for Rafael to steady rock through the rest of winter.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!