When I mentioned to my Montevidian friend that I was coming here his reaction was less than encouraging. His comments ranged from it’s similar to Adelaide, the architecture is better in Buenos Aires and why?. Dude, not really selling it but I still came.
I had initially wanted to stay in downtown or old town but my friend had advised that I should stay at the beaches. While a good idea, the beaches, like anywhere tend to be much more expensive and being much further from the centre the taxi’s would also cost more so I decided to stay a few kms out of town in Cordon.
The Airbnb is a studio apartment on the 11th floor of a fairly new building and is quite nice but I have no idea how people live here permanently, I need a bit more space. There is a couch but it’s below the tv so you still have to sit on the bed to watch it. But it has everything and the bathroom is plenty big enough, although there are no windows with only a sliding doors to the balcony for fresh air.
Being Sunday I knew there were markets (Feria de Tristan Narvaja translating to fair on Tristan Navaja street) that were apparently a must see and got an uber to drop me off. Well damn, these are quite literally the biggest markets I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world and they were heaving. They stretch the length of Tristan Narvaja street with is about 800 metres and the stalls are packed in side by side. But then you come to a cross street and there are more on either side and this just keeps happening. I went down one of the cross streets and there were cross streets off the cross streets and I was starting to get a little bit lost.
Seriously, though they sell everything and I do mean everything – produce, cleaning supplies, there are stalls that sell pretty much everything you’d find in a supermarket, new tools, rusty old tools, toys, books, records, clothes, jigsaw puzzles, kitchen supplies, mirrors, light shades and amongst all these are the food vans and musicians.
I booked a day trip to Punta del Este which is coastal town 140kms southeast of Montevideo. It’s probably most well know for the sculpture of the fingers sticking out of the sand. We stopped at a few places along the way and had a few hours to kill in the town to have lunch and meander and I managed to see the fingers statue without there be a ton of other people.
Next next day I did another tour this time to Colonia del Sacramento about 180kms southwest of Montevideo. We made a stop at Granja Arenas about half an hour before town. It a museum and farm that sells cheese and jams. The museum is a “world of collections”. It started when Emilo Arenas was ten years old and had a lucky key ring from his Mum and a pencil that he’d been given for an exam. He asked his teacher from another pencil and she gave him two and that started a collection. There are four rooms in the building that houses 24,000 pencils, 46,000 key rings, 4,800 ashtrays, 3,500 perfume bottles and 5,500 pins….my idea of hell.
Colonia del Sacramento is one of the oldest towns in Uruguay and sits opposite Buenos Aires and is frequently done as a day trip from there. The historic part of the town is simply gorgeous and I got to feed my fetish of photographing windows and doors and houses with bougainvilleas growing against them and I was totally in my element. Had a fabulous spaghetti bolognaise with homemade pasta for lunch and then went wandering. I had heard about the Origami Museum which I managed to find and was totally blown away. These are definitely not one sheet of paper jobbies and as I walked from display to display I lost count of the number of times I said wow. Another 10 hour day by the time I walked back to the apartment from the pick up location and I needed to do some washing.
The door to the apartment is opened by keypad rather than a lock and when I punched in the numbers it starts flashing and tells me the battery is running low (thankfully in English). I thought about taking the washing down but wasn’t sure if the door would let me back in so had get onto the host who doesn’t live in the building but came around to change the batteries. Finally got the washing done as I was essentially out of clean clothes.
Final day in Montevideo and the plan was to do the old town but it started raining during the night and bucketed down for a good chunk of the morning. The weather app said it was going to drizzle at about 10am but clearly it’s idea for drizzle and my idea of teeming differ considerably so I hung around the apartment until nearly lunch time and uber-ed it the port to start my meandering from there. I wasn’t able to find a tourist office so didn’t have a physical map of the city and I’ve come to really hate Google Maps. I’m one of these people that turns the map around so it’s facing the way I’m walking….yes, yes I know it’s weird but it works for me and I find my way everywhere so stop judging. But Google Maps does my fucking head in because I can’t turn it around and I don’t know which way I’m going and I go back and forth and yay, I’m getting my steps up but damn it’s frustrating as hell.
I eventually found the Igelsia de San Francisco which is not nearly as ornate as most Catholic Churches and discovered Zabala Plaza which I’d inadvertently walked past three times.
Walked down Sarandi Street which is a mall and found the Catedral Metropolitan and Cabildo (town hall), then on to Independcia Plaza and finally mirador panorámico de la Intendencia de Montevideo (panoramic viewpoint of the Montevideo City Hall). It’s free to go up to the 22nd floor in a glass outdoor lift (I have no issue with heights but I hate those lifts) where you have an almost 360° view with seats and gardens and a cafe.
It took me a while to warm to Montevideo but I eventually got there. Probably didn’t help that I hadn’t seen the city centre until almost my last day. I’d describe most of the old suburbs as gritty in the sense that through out the city and where I was staying there are lots of abandoned / run down buildings which in parts gives it that run down look hence me terming it gritty. Having said that, I didn’t feel unsafe there at all.
Tomorrow starts the first of three flights to get home.