The ferry to Colonia del Sacramento was very efficient - checked baggage was coming round the conveyor as we got to it, which is a good start.
Colonia is a quiet, fairly picturesque little town, apparently a popular local weekend break destination. It makes for a relaxing afternoon and evening - you can see the whole place in 24 hours, including its many cobbled streets, pleasingly spartan church and a lighthouse you can climb (unusually set a little way back from the coast, should you ever be sailing around here...). It has a few missable little local museums containing ceramic tiles, how Portuguese settlers used to live, etc - the best things we saw were some old maps and the skeleton of a giant cross between an armadillo and a turtle.
It's a very quiet place on a Friday night (one or two spots might get busy late on), but there are a few fun restaurants, including Drugstore where you can eat in an old car (or have red wine spilled on you :() and Viejo Barrio where the personable waiter changes his silly hat every time he appears. He even did this for us when we were the only people there, having an early Saturday lunch.
The bus to Montevideo takes 2-1/2 hours and seems comfy and efficient, even offering free wifi. I was a bit surprised to see a few people standing, but that was only until people got off at local stops.
Montevideo itself feels a bit like a quiet version of BA. We arrived on Saturday afternoon and just had time to get to the Carneval museum - turns out 20 minutes is ample, but it has a few fun costumes and photos. This is at the
Mercado del Puerto, a lovely indoor market which is mainly places to eat and feels authetically old. It really buzzes on Saturday lunchtimes (lunch lasts a long time here!) but is closed for dinner - we came back for Sunday lunch, which was quieter but still recommended.
But MV is probably the quietest place I have ever seen at 5:30 on a Saturday - shops are closed, bars haven't opened... We tried to find a bar to watch Real-Barca, but no luck, so we chilled out in the great indoor courtyard at our hostel.
Dinner at Mercado de los Artesanos - another marketplace with restaurants, on a smaller scale and promising a show, but we gave up when it hadn't started by 10:30. Still can't get used to how late people eat here.
There is a huge flea market here on Sundays at Tristan Narvaja, so we went there in the morning. I believe you could buy almost anything here. One guy was trying to sell just 3 things: 4 castors he'd taken off an armchair or table, a pair of shoes and a bucket of creosote (I think). I had to make sure Lilly didn't buy any kittens...
Ideally in Montevideo you'd want to take in a football match at Estadio Centenario, the national stadium and home of the first World Cup final. Penarol play here, but they're away, so we decided to go to see MV's other big club, Nacional. They occasionally use the national stadium for big matches but today they're at their usual home, Gran Parque Central, against Danubio. Emboldened by the Boca game, we just hopped on a bus to the stadium an hour before kick-off, bought a couple of tickets and picked out a concrete step to sit on.
Good job we were early - it's a 22,000 capacity ground and it gets very full. Health and safety would have a field day as even the aisles are packed. We were on one side which is all concrete seating (there are plastic seats on the far side - luxury!). Surprisingly, not only does everyone sit, if they stand for an exciting moment they sit down again promptly without being told by stewards (if there are any), at least until the last few minutes when everyone stands - and nobody leaves early. Probably because they can't get out until the police ease open the outer gates a good 5 minutes after the match has finished.
If you do turn up late, by the way, the best way to get some space is to carry a little girl on your shoulders and another on your arm, and then just stand in front of someone - by which I mean me - so several people can't see a thing. They will soon shuffle up and let you sit down.
But the bonus to arriving early is the pre-match entertainment - you get to watch the reserves of both teams play. This happened at Boca, too - it took us a while to realise they were the reserves, they were so bad. Here the Nacional reserves played some lovely soft-shoe stuff on the edge of the box and could have had 6 in 10 minutes if their shooting wasn't woeful - entertaining stuff though. I can't tell you the score because there is no scoreboard in the ground, but no goals while we watched.
At Boca, before the game the ground launched millions of bits of foil paper, and then some guys with leafblowers spent 5 minutes half-heartedly blowing them off the pitch before kick-off. It's a bit more budget here, so a few people in the crowd have brought their own little squares of paper for key moments. But as at Boca, there's a great atmosphere, with drums and a grand wave of singing.
All that's missing is some quality football, and it stays missing. I guess anyone good here gets snapped up by the Argentine league fairly quickly. After 40 minutes I said I couldn't see where a goal was coming from, but before I could add 'unless a defender miss-kicks from a corner in his own 6-yard box' Nacional were 1-0 up. Soon after the break it was 1-1, another corner and a more conventional unmarked-attacker-5-yards-out, and I wondered if we had jinxed another home team. Maybe we would be able to hire ourselves out to jinx teams all over South America.
The second half was a bit more exciting, though still low on quality, and Nacional eventually turned their upper hand into a goal in the closing moments, before spurning the best chance of the match and seeing a visiting player sent off for, um, not sure what - possibly retaliation since the free kick also went Danubio's way and a Nacional player was writhing on the floor.
Which reminds me - from the Boca match, I didn't have much cause to write about S American stereotypes like diving, feigning injury and time-wasting. Sadly this was a masterclass. Much to my surprise, the ref booked a Nacional player for a dive in the box quite early. That didn't deter several repeats and the ref didn't bother getting his card out for that again.
It may sound as if we didn't enjoy the game, but we did really! The atmosphere was good, flagging only slightly during flatter patches of the game, and the match itself was ok - a bargain for less than 7 quid.
Other things we saw at the game were fireworks (3) and a lot of people carrying thermos flasks and yerba mate mugs (see Lilly's post).
We finished with an excellent dinner at Locos de Asar, which specialises in 'parilla* and sushi'. Mad combo and we didn't chance the sushi. Nice place though.
* Don't think I've mentioned it but parilla is their word for giant wood-fired grills, which are brilliant.
And that's it for our flying visit to Uruguay. We didn't have time to visit the big stadium/football musuem, go up the former tallest building in South America*, hit the beach or walk/cycle the extensive 'rambla' (coastline walk)... Not a bad place to visit next time you're in the area.
* We tried wandering in one evening and calling the lift, but got turfed out. Apparently you can go up but I don't know the details.
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