March 20 - Montevideo

The ship sailed into Montevideo on Sunday evening after dark, and docked just before midnight.  Before going to bed, I went out on the balcony and looked at the lights of Montevideo off the starboard side of the ship, and enjoyed the cool breeze.

This morning I was up around 6:30, final packing, and out of the cabin by 8:00 as required…met Jim and Neil Ann for breakfast on the 2nd deck restaurant, and we were picked up just outside the ship at 9:00 am sharp, to be driven from the port (which is in the Old City) for about 30 minutes to the Sofitel Hotel & Casino way down the beach east of the main part of the City.  We followed the beach road past miles of apartment buildings, and finally it became a bit more residential, until we got to the hotel, right on the beach in the neighborhood called Carrasco.  This hotel/casino was built in the 1920s and is a beautiful old building that looks to me just like it could be in Monte Carlo.

Sofitel Hotel & Casino

Hotel Lobby

After getting checked in, our driver (the same one who had brought us from the ship), took Jim and me for a City tour lasting about 4 hours, and it was just great.  He was full of information, and easily one of the most energetic, enthusiastic people I’ve ever met, and he made the tour a lot of fun.   We started out driving back west towards the Old City, or Ciudad Vieja, through several different neighborhoods, & our first stop was the Estadio Centanario, the main soccer stadium.  The stadium was built in 1930 for the very first FIFA World Cup, which was held that year in Montevideo and won (I think he said) by Uruguay.  Our guide was clearly obsessed by soccer, as we had to circle the stadium twice before he managed to tell us everything there was to know!  The stadium is in a huge park with several other sports facilities, and the beautiful Monumento a la Carreta, which we stopped to look at.

Next stop was the Legislative Palace of Uruguay, the seat of the legislative branch of the national government.  The City of Montevideo has about 1.3 million inhabitants, and the country of Uruguay has about 3.3 million, so this whole country is smaller than the State of Louisiana. 

Next we headed downtown, stopping at the Mercado Agricola, which was beautiful on the outside, but basically just a disappointing modern food court on the inside. 

From there we drove to the City Hall building downtown, and rode an elevator up to the observation deck on the top floor to get a really interesting bird’s eye view of the whole city, harbor, and Rio de la Plata.  Back to street level, we continued into the old city and ended up at Plaza Independencia, where there was a beautiful statue of Gen. Jose Gervasio Artigas, the “father” of Uruguay, in front of the Presidential Office building, which was itself adjacent to one of the old government buildings, the Palacio Estevez.  

Palacio Estevez, the 2nd seat of government

Statue of Gen. Jose Artigas

We toured the exhibit upstairs in the Palacio Estevez, which was primarily about the presidency and the various presidents of Uruguay, and learned about the special Presidential Sash (of which there were numerous examples from Uruguay’s history), the terms of office, etc.  It was very, very interesting.  Underneath and behind the the Artigas statue was the large, very somber mausoleum of Gen. Artigas, which is kept under military guard 24/7 much like we saw in Buenos Aires a few weeks ago at the tomb to San Martin. It was beautiful and very moving.

The Mausoleum of Gen. Artigas

On the east side of the square was the fabulous Palacio Salvo, one of the most architecturally interesting buildings that I’ve ever seen.  Although it’s gotten some TLC in recent years, it seems badly underutilized, especially at the street level.

The Palacio Salvo

Palacio Salvo as seen through the Citadel Gate

There was still more to see!  We walked from the Plaza through one of the citadel gates of the old city, then down a pedestrian mall, to the Plaza de la Constitucion, a beautiful square filled with plane trees and an ornate fountain in the center, another government building (this the original one from the founding of the country in the early 1800s) a big cathedral, and several other beautiful buildings.

The Cabildo, where Uruguay’s Constitution
was signed in 1830

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

After this, it was time for lunch, and we were dropped off almost across the street from where we had disembarked the ship earlier in the day at another bit indoor food market where Jim and I did a bit of shopping and then had a HUGE lunch of Uruguayan steak, fries and local beer.  Then it was back to the hotel in Carrasco, via Uber, and I took a quick walk across the road to the beach, and around the beautiful neighborhood of homes and shops behind the hotel.

With 1.3 million inhabitants, I wouldn’t say that Montevideo is a small place, but we kept seeing familiar faces from the ship at almost every place we stopped all day! At this hotel, the group of Australians that we became so friendly with are also staying, totally by chance, so we had one more opportunity tonight to share drinks and dinner (only bar food after that huge lunch) with them.

Finally, since my mother came to this very casino in 1950 during a summer trip to South American with my grandmother and uncle, and she remembers visiting and playing at the casino (even though she was underage), I thought that I should visit the casino myself 73 years later, so I wandered down there, but unfortunately it was just a huge underground maze of slot machines and not all that interesting. The only area even remotely resembling a what I imagined it as were the VIP areas where there were a few table games. Still, the public areas of this hotel are really posh and elegant. I imagine that in 1950 the casino was on the main floor off the lobby in one of those elegant spaces.

So, this ends a fabulous trip to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay (briefly), Antarctica, South Georgia Island and Uruguay. Tomorrow we head to the airport here for a 1:30 pm flight to São Paulo, then an overnight flight to Dallas, and the final leg back to New Orleans on Wednesday morning. It’ll take a while to process it all (and even longer to process all the photos), but it has truly been the trip of a lifetime. We met many seasoned travelers on this cruise, and almost all of them all agreed that this expedition cruise was the highlight of all their travels. I’ve seen and done things that I never imagined I ever would! A truly amazing experience.