Carolina and Charo took several of us around the Old City to see what was going on. We ended up having a beautiful afternoon to wander around. It had been raining all morning so we weren't sure how it would work out. There were even more booths than normal set up to sell tourist type stuff. But I actually resisted the urge to buy anything. One of the first things we saw were Flamenco dancers, which were very cool. There were also a bunch of little girls walking around in flamenco dresses, but we never got to see them dance.
We then started toward the port. When we were walking through Plaza Zabala, we had to stop and look at the monument there. All of the students have to present on a monument for Rhonda's class, so we often stop to look at monuments to try to tell if they are significant and to take pictures of them. Anyway, while we were there we saw an old lady and little girl feeding the pigeons. With the pigeons was a bright green bird (parakeet?). It was really pretty.
On the edge of the plaza was Palacio Taranco. In the basement they had a lot of Greek and Mesopotamian artifacts, most bowls and vases. The rest of the house had been restored to its original form, although, I think the furniture came from another house. It had some amazing marble staircases. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside. I believe the house was done in Rocco, so it was a tad gaudy. Pretty magnificent... but gaudy. There was a garden in the back that adjoined the plaza. We did find this really gross but... probably a roach of some kind. But I kept trying to get a close up of it for my nephew. Apparently it grossed out my camera too, b/c it refused to focus on it. So the best I can get is this one of Kelsey and the bug.
We then headed to a museum dedicated to Carnivale. We had to wait in line for awhile, because they gave guided tours. It was really neat though, once we got in to see the different costumes and hear some of the history. The museum collaborated with a local school and some children would do presentations on different ones of the costumes and some famous people from Carnivale, which was super cool. The school is a bilingual school. While Charo and Carolina went to watch a film, Matt got to talking to some of the boys. He was a huge hit.After the museum we were tired, hungry, and really getting a little grumpy, well at least I was a little grumpy. We were next to the Mercado del Puerto which is pretty touristy, but filled with restaurants AND PEOPLE. It was really pretty crazy in there. Rather than fighting our way to the interior, especially since there was 9 or so of us, we chose a restaurant near the door. It was funny how everyone's mood improved after they got something to drink and ate something.
While we were sitting there, we got to talking about aerobics (of course) Kelsey, Kimberly, and I were reliving the aerobics of the morning or something. Well I say something about Fabricio and look up and there he is walking through the restaurant. We all yell at him and say, "Hi." Now Montevideo is a city of more than a million and I only know about 20 people that live outside the El Chana/ CasaACU building. I can't believe we've run into him two Saturdays in a row in two different parts of town. (And he's probably thinking I can never get away from these crazy girls from the US.)
Mercado del Puerto was super loud. As in we were having to yell to anyone not sitting right next to us. We knew that there was really loud music. What we didn't know was that it was coming from a Brazilian band walking around with dancers. Well at least we didn't know until they came by where we were. They saw a group of tourists and came over to entertain us. Charo got up and danced with them. It was pretty funny. We were pretty disturbed by their dancers though. To say they didn't have on much would be an understatement. I'd say it was less than a bikini. Now really, I do not have a body to pull of such a thing certainly. Really you have to be super skinny. While these girls were not really big... um... they shouldn't have been wearing that either.After that we paid and left. We went to a bus stop that was close by. A bus pretty quickly arrived that we could have taken back. Well it was super crowded, so Carolina said we should wait a couple of minutes and take the next one. We all thought it sounded like a fine idea. Well 15 minutes later the bus still hadn't come. Jonathan S. and I had wanted to walk back anyway, so we took off. (We found out later that they waited a few more minutes, then decided to follow us, but just as they got across the street, the bus showed up.)
Well, Jonathan and I were really glad we walked. The old city was full of people. Several bands were playing, although they seemed to mainly be covering Beatles songs. It was fun just to walk through. After we got out of the Old City, the crowd thinned out some. We were walking through one plaza and got stopped by a huge circle of people. We could hear Tango music playing and when we got closer we could see it was a bunch of old couples Tangoing. It was so cute!
We walked a little further and could hear drums. In another plaza, there was a percussion group playing upturned plastic barrels and other everyday items like team kettles. And even cooler than that was the fact that they had fire dancers with them. It was super fun.We finally got home and bragged about what we got to see. (Plus we walked an extra 2 1/2 - 3 miles... makes up for the fried dinner I had.) Oh another good thing that happened, was that as we were walking along, I suddenly remembered that the we were going on daylight savings time. For those of you playing along at home we are now three hours ahead of you!
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