Montevideo

We spent 3 nights and 2 days in Montevideo. It was probably the perfect amount of time and we kept very busy. As we had arrived so late on Saturday night we didn't really see any of the city when we Ubered in from the airport. Our plan for our first day was to rent bikes for a few hours and bike the Rambler a 14 mile boardwalk along the Rio Plata. I checked for local bike rental shops and found a bike rental shop a 20 minute walk from our Condo. Many of the bike rentals were closed because it was Sunday but this was reportedly open according to Google and their hours had been confirmed by the owner only last week. We headed off and after a few blocks I said to Cheryl "I think this place is a dump" There was dog shit on the sidewalks especially around any tree, graffiti covered the lower floors of all the buildings including the security shutters, the buildings looked in rough shape and the sidewalks were so uneven and cracked that I kept stumbling and tripping. Montevideo looked terrible at least the part of town we were in. Plus the streets were absolutely deserted. We made it to the bike shop and it was closed. So disappointing. We walked back to our Airbnb and came across a very pleasant market of mainly food.

One skill of travelling was to be able to pivot quickly. I had come across a walking tour around Prado Park and some high end surrounding neighbourhoods including the presidential palace. There was also a notable art gallery at the end of the walk. We Ubered off to the start of the walk which began in a very nice rose garden although not as nice as Beunos Aires. The Uber driver spoke passable English and told us how safe Montevideo was. We visited two beautiful statues in the park, one commemorating the last 4 indigenous Urugugayians who were sent to Paris and died of home sickness and the other one of a stage coach. We continued our walk around the perimeter of the park but had to divert into an adjoining neighborhood to visit a Carmelite church. It had been finished in 1959 and had a neogothic appearance but on closer inspection was made of concrete. It was very beautiful. Our initial impression of the surrounding neighbourhood was that it was very nice but then when we started walking through the neighborhood we noticed a couple things. The houses were probably 75 to 100 years old and when built were probably all beautiful mansions. Closer inspection revealed that many of them had fallen into disrepair and some were derelict. The non derelict homes were surrounded by significant fences and walls topped with razor wire or electric fencing. Something one would not expect in a safe neighborhood. We kept walking and also noticed uneven sidewalks, dog shit, and ornate street lights that didn't look like they had worked for years. All within blocks of the presidential palace. We did a quick walk through the botanical garden which was pleasant enough and no dogs. The presidential house looked good as did the house next door. We finished the walk at the Juan Manuel Barnes Museum. It was closed as indicated by a hand written sign.

Sunday evening we walked over to Independence Square the heart of Montevideo and the location of an impressive statue and mausoleum of General Jose Artigas a leader of independence from Spanish rule. Other notable sites were the Canadian embassy, an opera house known as Teatro solis and a beautiful 1920s skyscraper known as the Palacio Salvo.

Monday morning we had hoped to go for a bike ride. Unfortunately it kept raining longer than initially predicted so we had to give up on the bike ride. We walked over to the Palacio Salvo building hoping to get on a tour. Chat GPT thought they offered an English tour at 10. They conceigre told us to come back for the English tour at 11:30. We walked around the old town and port area. It looked a little rough but one could tell they were trying to maintain it as a lot of cruise ships visit Montevideo. We saw the headquarters of Bank of Nova Scotia in Uruguay which seemed a little strange. We made it back to Palacio Salvo by 11:30. The concierge on the desk told us that he had told us the wrong times and that the English tours weren't available until 2 or 4 pm. We walked back to our Air BnB for lunch. Our time constraint for the day was we had to pick up our rental car at 5:30. I am a big fan of picking the car up the night before as sometimes getting the rental car can be very time consuming. After lunch we did a brief walk on the boardwalk before heading back to Palacio Salvo for a 3rd time at 4 pm. The boardwalk near us wasn't too exciting but at least we got to walk along the water.

The Palacio Salvo had been a hotel completed in 1928 by the Salvo brothers who had immigrated from Italy and made their fortunes in the textile industry. The architect was Mario Palanti an Italian living in BA. He also designed the Barolo Palace in BA which I think I included a photo of earlier in our trip in this blog. The carvings on the two bottom floors of the building were dedicated to Charles Darwin so there were all these ornate stone carvings of finches and tortoise . The architect was a combination of art deco, Renaissance and gothic. We went to the top floor at 95 metres and the 10 floor roof at 70 metres. It was spectacular. We also saw their ballroom, their beautiful marble staircase and a beautiful stain glass window. On the bottom floor they had a tango museum as the famous Tango song Cumparsita had been written on the site by Mateo Rodriguez as a dance hall had been located there prior to building the hotel. And the hotel you ask. They had experienced financial problems in the 30s and they had to sell off the individual rooms. The larger rooms made nice apartments but the smaller rooms still remain as smaller rooms to this day some having to use communal showers.

We noticed a lot of street signs labeled Donna Coca on top of the street name. It seemed so odd. Cheryl googled it and it ment donated by coca cola. Coca cola had paid for many of the street signs. Crazy.

The people here in Uruguay love their Mate, a caffeinated beverage of cut up Yura mata leaves that you add hot water to at 80 degrees Celsius and drying through a straw. We see carrying their thermoses and mugs with straws everywhere.

We walked over and got our rental car from the Sixt rental car office only several blocks away. The main excitement was driving the car onto our building car elevator and driving out of the elevator. The Nissan was a tight fit even with the mirrors turned in. We were very tired after all of our walking so we chilled out in our Airbnb that night.Leggi altro