Montevideo, Uruguay

Montevideo reminded us of a mixture of Athens, Mexico and strangely Chicago.
Athens for the height and construction of the buildings - stone buildings with many balconies looking out into the tree lined streets. Mexico for all the spanish signs around and the parks -nice but with some trash around them. And Chicago for the miles long riverfront park and bike trail next to a busy road and enclosed by highrises. And when I say river it only seemed like a river because of the brown color, we could not see across the river to the other side so it could have been a lake or ocean for all we knew. It took us a while to get settled in, after 20+ hours in transit we were ready for a shower and sleep, but while we are settling into bed at 11pm life in the hostel was just getting started and they partied till 4am, not the most conducive to sleeping!
Downtown Montevideo is quite nice and very reminiscent of Europè, large shady squares with fountains, huge ornate cathedrals and beautiful detailed architecture. For the most part these buildings were in disrepair and in need of a little TLC, but Dale and I had some dreams of buying one of them and fixing it up, what an adventure that would be.
So we were both a little shy and rusty with our spanish but we were trying to speak in Spanish as much as possible. That being said, I know we need a lot more practice. Dale ordered us 2 hamburgers for lunch and we ended up with 2 beers instead. Hamburguesa v cerveza I could see where the mix up happened, and hey it was not a bad problem to have, we just drank the beers and tried again, luckily he understood us this time or we could have been in trouble drinking all that beer on an empty stomach.
Overall, we are really glad that flights to Montevideo were so much cheaper than Buenos Aires because we thoroughly enjoyed our time in Montevideo.

Chivito - A Urugayan specialty. Steak sandwich with bacon, ham, boiled egg, cheese, lettuce, tomato, olives, pickles, peppers and mayo. Quite delicious.