Around Montevideo

I found this post in my drafts folder and thought I would finish it and post it, why not share some experiences even if they are about a year old now - from November 2015. Uruguay is a lovely country.  It's small, 68,037 mi² and has a lovely coastline.  Montevideo, the capital is on the Atlantic Coast.We are in Spring here, in the Southern Hemisphere and it's lovely.  Uruguay, like much of the New World was inhabited by European immigrants (populated, I should say as these territories were sparsely inhabited by native people).  Uruguayans are mostly descendants of immigrants from Spain and Italy.  The Spanish part may be a bit more obvious (Uruguayans speak Spanish) but the subtleties of Italian are very interesting.  I find the language (Uruguayan dialect of Spanish) to be melodic like Italian and Italian food is rife in Uruguayan cuisine.One of my favorite "all-Uruguayan" things is their tradition of BBQ.  The most common restaurant is a smoke house, meat is smoked in one part of the kitchen and the rest serves as a conventional kitchen.  Oh, I also love Uruguays tradition of wine.  Must have wine.I had the weekend off and explorde with some colleagues.  We took a taxi from our hotel to the start of downtown and walked the rest.  Here are some photos from our day.