Montevideo, Uruguay

Our hostel ended up being in a great location because it was close to the old city in Montevideo which had a bunch of cool historical buildings and locations. We decided to do the free walking tour in the early afternoon and it met in the Plaza Independencia which happened to be only 4 blocks from our hostel! The tour guide was a small Uruguayan woman who walked us all over the old city for 3 hours. She was easy to understand and explained some history and local tips about Montevideo. Since this tour started at 11am, we had a break in the middle to get some water and an ice cream! We really enjoyed the parks/plazas around the town...they were full with people out enjoying the sunshine and each other's company. One fun fact we learned today was a popular theory about how Montevideo got its name (it still sounds like a far-fetched theory to us). Basically, it's the way they used to describe how to find this city to incoming ships. So back in the day they would tell incoming ships to come to the 6th (VI roman numerals mountain (MONTE) from (DE) East (E) to West (O). Which all eventually became shortened and abbreviated to: MONTE-VI-D-E-O.

Learning from our earlier mistakes we did a small load of laundry at the hostel and then just hung out in hostel with a few other people who were staying there. We were able to knock out a bunch of good spots in Montevideo and we finished out evening with watching the sunset on la Rambla by the water.

*****
Lodging: Bo! Hostel
Activities: MVD Walking tour