Montevideo 2

Of course, we had to knock off a few of the Montevideo tourist hot spots while we were there. Bode and I were planning to hit some of the free museums, but the pouring rain led us directly into the closest one, The Gaucho Museum. The space itself was spectacular, my highlight of the visit. The museum part was a small collection of items tracing the cowboy history from the indigenous through the Spanish and Portuguese influences, but we did learn some things. Original guachos wore silver spurs with no boots – no shoes at all. Oh, and of course Bode loved the guns. There was even a collection of silver mate cups. Our favorite was shaped like a bird.

Next up was the mercado at the port. We’d heard there wa good food here, but imagined it would be the normal stalls with raw meat hanging from hooks. Wrong. It was the nicest place we’d seen in Montevideo, for sure. Fancy restaurants, parrillas piled with meat, even guys shining shoes while you dine. We sat down at an outdoor spot with white tablecloths and ordered up like we were important folk. It felt like we were back at the ferry building in SF (yeah, Giants!)

Then, we left the capital and headed back to Piriapolis for the week. We still have a huge to-do list, but we need some space and a more relaxing town.