Montevideo, Uruguay

Took a bus tour of Montevideo this morning. Drove through the beautiful parts of the city, along the shoreline stopping for a photo op at a beautiful memorial park above the Rio de la Plata and then walked the downtown pedestrian street shopping along the way.

Montevideo, unlike Buenos Aires, has miles of pristine beaches and wide sidewalks allow the casual stroller to walk for miles. It being winter there swimming and or playing on the beach was not in the cards. But shopping, that's another story!

We were dropped off at the pedestrian street and walked the several blocks to the Port Market where we sat and ate in the same place Anthony Bourdain did when he filmed his show on Uruguay. Fantastic meal of, what else, MEAT! Had a great steak, chorizo, papas, a wonderful bibidas called media y media which is half white wine and half champagne. It comes in a champagne bottle and we had to purchase a some to bring home and share with friends. Everything was delicious including the items we shared off other´s plates--chicken, pork, beef innards. Yes, innards! Intestines, kidneys, liver, even sweetbreads. Not bad. Being adventurous is the key down here. Try it out. What does it taste like. Well, first of all, the beef here is far more flavorful than American beef. We have lost much of the real beef flavor in our cattle due to corn feeding, raising the animals in feedlots and especially due to the speed with which we raise our cattle. Here cattle are fed on grass and are allowed to live longer lives helping to give the meat a much richer meatier flavor. The intestines and other innards tasted like liver to me only, in the case of the intestines, chewier. As I love liver having grown up in a home that regularly served it with carmelized onions, I enjoyed these unusual cuts of meat. The sweetbreads, which is actually a part of the brain, the thymus and pancreas to be precise, was a first for me. It was creamy, mild and delicious. I'd eat it again anytime. Here in the states we rarely see this on a menu due to the scare of mad cow disease--an issue unheard of there as again, they don't raise there cattle in disease ridden feedlots, but rather in pristine pastures out on the pampas.

Walked back up the street sticking our heads in the shops along the way back towards the bus. I sat on a bench for a while and Leslie went into some of the stores to do some more serious shopping. As I sat there, the world walked by and I took some of my favorite photos of locals--a little old lady bent over with age, groups of school children on a field trip.

Back to the hotel for a while and to prepare to leave for that evening's concert. This was, like most of our concerts, an exchange concert meaning our choir sang and a local choir also sang. The WWU Choir sang secondly. The audience's response was overwhelming with three standing ovations and encores. Following the concert a reception was held in the social hall of the church This gave us the opportunity to meet the locals but with music being the immediate commonality, language issues melted away as everyone found fun ways to communicate, our students trying out their basic Spanish and the locals using the gathering as an opportunity to practice their English. Leslie, who spent a lot of time practicing Spanish before the trip, made good use of it getting progressively better a the trip went along. She found herself getting better and better at being able to communicate with the choir directors and other locals. We ate, sang, laughed and got to know each other until nearly midnight.

Back to the hotel and good night's sleep before we leave in the morning at 10 am to take the Buquebus ferry back to Buenos Aires.