Montevideo, Uruguay

In an attempt to work around the high holidays, leave room for upcoming midterms, and still get a lot of traveling in, I took a little weekend trip over to Montevideo, the capitol and largest city in Uruguay. With about 1.5 million residents in the city (though it felt like a lot less) and another 500,000 in the surrounding area, Montevideo is a lot smaller than Buenos Aires. It's a colonial city, so it feels a lot like the older areas of Buenos Aires (the pictures I have posted look very similar to the ones I took in San Telmo, I think). Montevideo is about a 25 minute flight across/down the Rio de La Plata from Buenos Aires (or a 3 hour ferry ride).

The first thing that struck upon arriving was how dependent this place is on Argentina, and specifically on Buenos Aires. When people in Philadelphia refer to going to "the city", they are 100% talking about New York and not Philly...I think it's a similar situation with Montevideo and Buenos Aires. The Montevideo airport actually has a special section specifically for flights arriving from the Jorge Newbery Aeroparque, the smaller of the two airports in Buenos Aires. The city of Montevideo seemed to be a bit more expensive than Buenos Aires, but the actual city didn't feel quite as nice. Most of the wealthier areas in the city tend to be along "la Rambla", which is a big boulevard that runs along the coastline.

Another big surprise was how empty the city was. While about 4 million additional people come in to Buenos Aires to work during the week, the city is by no means empty on the weekends. There is ALWAYS a tremendous amount of activity, restaurants are full, and there are tons of cultural events. I think Montevideo lacks a lot of that...the old city has a decent restaurant/bar scene, but it's confined to a few streets, and everything outside of that seems extremely spread out. I really enjoyed walking and biking through the city's different neighborhoods and getting a feel for what life is like in a city that is NOT Buenos Aires.

Despite the unfortunately cold weather, I was able to:
-Explore the old city, eat at el Mercado del Puerto, go to Museo del Carnaval (Carnaval is HUGE in Montevideo)
-Go bowling and see an Uruguayan casino
-Rent bikes and ride along "la rambla" and through a few other outlying neighborhoods
-See a play at one of Montevideo's theaters

Definitely a good trip! Check out the pictures here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2055306&id=1495500074