World Travellers / Wannabe Expats...: Finally Home...

Wow. What a great trip! We had a blast! We met some really great, interesting people. We're home now, but getting all that we experienced into a decent blog is going to be a challenge. Especially since we haven't slept yet and are a little bit punchy... We do still have teenagers to deal with... This internet thing, what an invention...

My pictures somehow seem all out of order and I'm too tired to do this right, but I'm so excited about Uruguay I want to share some of it with you.

So, this is our (late) lunch last Wednesday... I have a better picture of David's steak, but I'm too lazy to download it because I wanted you to see both of these DELICIOUS lunches... Total bill was maybe $25 US. That included a bottle of wine, 2 bottles of "agua con gas" and ice cream. I think that steak weighed about a pound and was PERFECTLY cooked. It's what I would refer to as a "hunk o meat". Seriously enough for both of us. Mine was "po-zhou" (pollo for you spanish speakers, chicken for you gringos... delicious in any language) Portion sizes here are unbelievable. You gotta just order one entree and split it. We're kinda slow, it took us about 2 days to figure this out... Wally told us that "doggy bags" are kinda frowned upon here, so "you've just gotta gut it out and eat it all"... ouch. It's hard to do that!

We've already told you about Wally and Denise, they're great. We imposed ourselves upon them again on Saturday, because our flight didn't leave until 9pm and we really like them. We tried calling first, but they were outside and didn't hear the call. So we dropped by anyway. (Sorry guys, we wanted to see you again!) While there, we met a neighbor of theirs, Tony, a brit married to an uruguayan lady. He was a hoot. These people are so nice and friendly and willing to help you out. Tony was a wealth of information, and entertaining in the process.

David, of course, somehow discovered the chilean guy that has a house next door to Denise and Wally that just so happened to have a couple of guitars that needed some playing... Denise, Tony and I were all standing around chatting for quite a while when I started wondering where David was... I figured maybe Wally had come home from his errands and the boys had run off... but, no, Wally was still off on his errands and David was off playing... I started realizing I was hearing music, so the paparazzi in me had to go investigate... well, I caught him in the act.

After standing around for a while, I decided I was hungry and wanted to go try out some "real" empanadas. There's a place just down the road and around the corner that handmakes 36 different types. So David and I went off to get some and bring them back to snack on.
-- (sidebar-- Wally's blog already covers the empanada adventure better that I could so you really ought to read his blogs too... they are quite entertaining-- wallyinuruguay.blogspot.com) He also wrote up the adventure to the supermercado that he and Denise took us to. I left my camera in the car so he took pictures of the deli case for me... "interesting stuff" for sale to eat there...
As we drove down the road, enroute to get empanadas, about 1/2 a mile from Wally and Denise's, we saw these 2 houses next door to each other, FOR SALE, right across the road from the beach... one of them I recognized as a house that had been advertised in International Living magazine for sale for $45k US.

This is the house for $45k above. This other house, right next door was also rather cute, we don't know what it's price was, the realty office was closed both times we went by it that day... We REALLY wanted to check them out inside while we were there, but late on a Saturday afternoon, chances weren't looking too good of that happening, especially since we had a flight to catch...
We are actually interested in both/either of them...

Here's the views of the beach from these houses, one looking left (north-ish), one looking right (south-ish)...