Belmont House Hotel Montevideo

A short drive to get to the workshop of the painter Vasquez. He was born in Uruguay and grew up to become one of the best known painters of or time. He was a friend and follower of Picasso and has lived in several countries around the world doing his painting. He has always classed this house as his home though and spent 20 years building it as he wanted. It is built on the side of a hill with fantastic views over the sea. It is built on several different ...

... all customers, including us.

The next few hours were dedicated to wandering the streets of the Ciudad Vieja, an area west of the central downtown and surrounded on the other three sides by the water, two sides of which are the port of Montevideo. As its name would suggest this is the historic city center, and it contains several old historical homes and buildings. Unfortunately, most of these buildings are in seriously bad shape as ...

... Colonia and the muddy brown waters of the Platte Riviera have been dispersed into the great Atlantic Ocean so the sea which surrounds the promontory on which the old town is located is a pleasant blue with only a hint of the brown that was so prevalent before. Unfortunately the lack of a beach, which is replaced by a concrete dock, means that the city proper is the part of town with the most character.

... in. Nice as it was it didn't really fill me up so in the interest of science to practice my Spanish I tried another shop and ordered " una empanda con carne y una con Jamon" which I took to be a small pasty with meat and one with ham. Sure enough that's what it was, but sadly it was ten tone of puff pasty (can you say that these days or has it changed its name to something more PC?). When you bit into it you were showered with a mass of crumbs and ...

... and is great to eat at and walk around, reminiscent of New York's docks. The plethora of restaurants offer huge amounts of meat grilled over huge barbecues and we left stuffed to the gills with beef, lamb, pork and something that looked like grilled pig fat, and tasted like it. All in all its a very nice city, very picturesque and right next to the sea. Its well worth a couple of days but no more, out to the coast...

... are 17ºC in spring and autumn, 25ºC in summer and 12ºC in winter. ARRIVING By plain The Carrasco International Airport, located 18km east from downtown area, serves main commercial airlines and connecting flights from Sao Paulo,, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina. www.aic.com.uy The Laguna del Sauce Airport is a regional airport located 15km away from the well ...

... So, instead of disembarking and spending the day around Montevideo (and of course, attempting to go to their military museum....), we had most of the day on the ship. We enjoyed some great music and activities on board and even went to a church service on board. By 5:00PM, the winds had settled enough to dock briefly so that we could take on supplies and bunker. (There aren't a lot of fuel opportunities where we're ...

... nearby and, being substantially preferrable, we moved on. We will be writing to the hotel reservation service in Colonia and suggesting they remove the Hotel Aramaya from their list ... ... Of course, we lost our deposit. On New Years Eve we headed down to the old town ... In Montevideo they like throwing large quantities of bits of paper from high buildings on 31/12 ... ticker tape style ... but then it gets ...

... chic and old world charm, this city has a bit of everything. We stayed in a cool arty hostel (which blessedly added cheese and fruit to the staple elements of the "hostel included breakfast", usually just white bread, jam, butter, and dulce de leche). It was 2 blocks from the beautiful seafront promenade, where we took in some youth roller hockey, beach volleyball, a 20 member roller dance ...

... 15 for a tip. We headed for the show arena and waited in a brisk wind, but good sunshine, for about 20 minutes for the gaucho - http://discoveringbuenosaires.files.wor dpress.com/2007/04/gaucho.jpg - competition. This was very exciting. Men rode their horses around the ring, and then they took the saddles off the horses for judging. Some of the men wore knives on their belts; all carried quirts. They looked very dashing, with their kerchiefs and ...