Random thoughts and Punta

Food...cheese, more cheese and then, some more cheese! My muffin top is growing steadily here as meal choices include pizza or pasta. Seriously, other than the eggplant dish I had a few nights ago, I have had pizza (plain cheese or cheese and mushrooms) or pasta )ravioli or crepes - both filled with cheese - for all of my lunches and dinner. It´s usually quite tasty, but wow, it´s a lot of cheese! I think Steve has had steak for almost every lunch and dinner, except for when we ordered in to the hotel and he got spaghetti with cheese sauce. Often we have found that you order what you would like and you receive what they have in the kitchen. We also typically have ensalada mixta which is lechuga (lettuce) y tomate. The lettuce has been very fresh butter lettuce at nearly every restaurant and comes in a large bowl so we split it. The dressing is oil and vinegar at each place.

There are small shops everywhere that have many pastry options... their pastries-cookies are very different than ours. First, they are very small. When I get a cookie at Palmers, Panera or Starbucks, they are huge! Here, to get the same amount, you would get maybe 4-6 of their little goodies. And, they have many more options, some dipped in chocolate, some with fruit, most with dolce de leche. Dolce de leche (caramel) is HUGE here and available almost everywhere. The shop keeper will have a flat styrofoam tray and load up all of your choices - each of which costs about a dime - and then they will wrap the flat in paper and send you to the cashier.

That brings up another thing we have noticed. There are no help wanted signs here and, there are an abundance of workers at each place we go to even though there may not necessarily be work for them to do. So, as one of the ex-pats explained: one person will help you get your item, another will ring it up, another will take your money, another will package it up for you. We haven´t really experienced something quite like that, but we notice many employees hanging out chatting and working their cell phones and we recognize that back home, that wouldn´t fly!

So, yesterday we headed to Punta de Este without our friend Carlos as he had a worker coming to his apartment. Punta was about a two hour drive and gave us a good idea of life outside Montevideo. We saw some suburbs, some countryside and then, when we arrived in Punta, some major Beverly Hills-style mansions!! You can google Punta de Este on the internet and you will see that it is THE place for the rich people of Argentina, Brazil, Spain and Italy as well as some American movie stars. We thought we would do some hob-nobbin´ with the stars, but they apparently didn´t know we were coming and weren´t available. We found a great place near the yacht harbor and had lunch (steak and pasta!) and wine there.

We also visited the home and studio of a famous artist, Carlos Paez Vilaro. Check this link out to see his unreal home! http://www.carlospaezvilaro.com/casapueblo.swf

We then visited the following famous art sculpture and took several pictures:
http://www.welcomeuruguay.com/puntadeleste/the-hand-monument.html

After heading out of Punta, we went to Bodega Ballena which is a winery just outside of Punta. Sadly, they were closed, but it was a beautiful drive.

We have adjusted to Montevideo time/customs so we ate again at 9:00 p.m. and this morning we slept until 9:00 a.m.! We have to confess that prior to dinner last night we went to McDonalds and had hot fudge and dulce de leche sundaes!! We paid in US dollars too. Sometimes you just need a little bit of home.

Today, we are off to do some Montevideo shopping and at 3:00 p.m. we will pick up Carlos and go the the Red Cross Uruguay! I brought them some pins from home and am excited to share them and learn about their activities here. there aren´t many swimming pools here, so I suspect they are not big on the swimming lesson madness we have at home.

Ciao!