Travel Tidbits: Country #43: Uruguay

September 2024:

Montevideo

• Very calm and safe
• It’s a great taste of Latino America without much danger, at all. Still has the feel of Peru, Bolivia, Columbia and Mexico. The block in the sidewalks, the streets, etc
• A lot of colonial architecture and new construction going on
• A large middle class, and much less poverty than most large Latin American cities
• I felt totally safe walking around, even at night on a Sunday when there were only a few people out. Still saw people with their kids and dogs
• Ciudad Vieja (old city) is very quiet at night, but safe. There are a couple of main walking streets (peatonales). Cool, hip restaurants.
  • inside the Mercado del Puerto, the Asado restaurants, bars and small shops inside were really cool. It was a remodeled old warehouse by the docks
  • The Museo del Carnaval is pretty cool, I didn’t realize how intense it is, how seriously it’s taken
• The Centro neighborhood around the square seems to be more lively, with more restaurants open at night
  • The 1972 Andes museum is definitely worth a visit. This is the basis of the movie alive where all of the soccer players got trapped in the Andes and had to eat the dead bodies. It was super intense, and I definitely got tears
  • Palacio Salvo was really cool, built in 1928 and has a Tango museum as well. This is the sister building of Palacio Barolo in Buenos Aires
  • I need to read more on Tango, apparently it started out as all men, and with knife fights (I didn’t fully understand the tour in Spanish 🤣)
• Driving in from the airport, there is a brand new Rambla/walkway) along the river in Buceo. There is a beach and looks like an upper-middle class neighborhood with a lot of new construction and heavy investment in the river front
• I later learned from my Argentinian co-workers that there’s a rivalry of sorts between Uruguay and Argentina where they both claim to have invented everything (Tango, Alfajores, Carnaval, etc)