Day 111 - Montevideo, Uruguay

Another great day today. Mother and daughter reunited and very happy! The plan for today is to explore the old town and then head to a winery to while away the afternoon. 

We get dropped at Theatro Solis near Independence plaza and start exploring from there. Montevideo has some gorgeous buildings and had some real contrasts between lovely classical buildings and old dilapidated buildings that also look really cool. 

Big four bingo is back! Oh how we have missed you. No EY though. Boo!

Now people may not know that Nige has a real passion (bordering on addiction) for tat shops. He gets drawn to them like a moth to the flame and we often have to put blinkers on him to get him past shops. If you ever lose Nige and wonder where he is, chances are he will be in a tat shop. Anyway, he did manage to out do himself today with his latest find - salt and pepper pots of two pigs shagging!!

They have some great stuff in this shop. Why didn't I start collecting these instead of Hard Rock glasses?

After a wander around the city we make our way to Mercado del Puerto which is a fantastic old market a bit like Borough Market but a bit grittier, that specialises in meat and massive piles of it. My kind of place. 

It's really cool in here and a great atmosphere. We pull up seven stools at Roldo's in the middle of the market for a few beers. 

It's such a great place - everywhere you look there are huge fires roaring with massive racks of meat cooking away. 

What a beautiful sight. 

Next up we head to the very aptly named Bodega Bouza Boutique winery which is about 30mins out of town. I had arranged for a mini bus to pick us up and we get a surprise when a full 52 seater coach turns up just to take us to the vineyard. Hilarious. 

http://www.bodegabouza.com/index_eng.php

We start a good rendition of our new song 'private transfer' sung to the tune of Tina Turner's private dancer. 

We arrive at Bouza which is absolutely stunningly beautiful. It's only a tiny high end winery, producing about 120k bottles per a year. 

We have a great tour of the vineyard and luckily we are right at the back end of the harvest so they are picking the last of the grapes and starting to process them. 

The machine that takes the stalks of the grapes. 

We then have a trip down to the cellar. 

Then for the good bit - the tasting in a gorgeous restaurant. We go for the classic tasting which involves attibg four wines, one white and three reds. We also have a huge platter of meats and cheeses on our table too. Absolute perfection. 

I don't usually like Merlot but this blend was lovely. 

Our favourite was the 100% tannat red. Strangely we had never even heard of tannat wine (similar to the Carmenere from Chile) but it was delicious. 

Trying to get Mum into red wine. Her face when tasting the Merlot-Tannat blend which was quite sharp was hilarious. It was like her usual shot face.  Surprisingly she did rank one of the reds over the gorgeous white. 

We then make our way outside to sit in the blissful sunshine and fantastic setting and order another couple of bottles of wine. 

Parking the empties. 

Red wine teeth. 

A very big thank you to Nanna and Vic who very kindly gave us some money via Jane for our travels. It was invested very wisely in our wine tasting. Very much appreciated. We toasted you both and even had some left over for a lovely dinner later. Well fed and watered. 

We have a very tipsy journey back to the hotel on our 52 seater coach to ourselves. After a quick turn around we head back out to try to catch the amazing sunset. Unfortunately we just miss it and there is nowhere with a great vantage point where we can have a drink so we head back to the old city. 

Amazing colours. 

We head to Bartolome Mitre between Buenos Aires and Sarandon streets which is supposed to be the heart of the Montevideo nightlife. The area is pretty desolate apart from 2-3 bars. We have a drink in El Pony Pisador which is supposed to be the most happening bar in town and is actually rubbish. 

Luckily there happened to be a really nice restaurant a few doors down that we stumble across called Adele Solis. It had another of those huge racks of meat over a roaring fire and served up a damn fine steak. 

One or two for the road at Shannon's Irish pub and we head back to the hotel. Montevideo has been very pleasant and I am still not convinced we found the centre of the nightlife in this city but time to move on tomorrow to Colonia de Sacremento.