Colonia, Uruguay

Hola
On Sunday I took a day trip across the river to Colonia Uruguay. My program bought us tickets to ride the Buquebus Rapido an hour across the river. The purpose of the trip was to see the old city of Colonia, which at one point was twice the size of Buenos Aires, and to eat at the house of our program director.

We arrived two hours before the bus showed up to take us to Mario's house (program director) so we took a little walk around the little city. Colonia is a completely different city than the hustle and bustle of BsAs across the river. Colonia is nice and quiet, with cobblestone roads and huge trees along the sidewalks providing much needed shade. We were shown a street named "De los Suspiros" which was a street where the marines would go to when they came from sea and they would be able to find a prostitute there for their services. It was hard to imagine that things like that went on in Colonia because of the tranquility of the area.

The bus arrived and we got on for a 15 min ride outside of the city to Mario's house. We pulled up and got off and I felt like I was back in Virginia. The area reminded me of the landscape of central VA. I loved it. Our directors house was huge. The house is used as a bread and breakfast and for COPA events. There were trees everywhere, with blueberries and lemons in the backyard, a pool and two lakes. For lunch we had a piece of steak with chorizo (sausage) and rice, salad, potatoes and different sauces for the meats.

After we ate we had free time to go back to little Colonia to do some walking around and eat dinner before we returned. I took some pictures which can be found on the link to my Argentine pix in the top right hand corner of this blog. For dinner we found a spot to eat something called a chivito. It is a typical Uruguayan sandwich consisting of the bread, a piece of lomo (thin steak) with a fried egg, cheese, lettuce, mayonnaise, bacon and ham. It was a very filling sandwich. Colonia was a very nice spot to visit, especially if you want to get away from the city life in BsAs.