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Published: April 12th 2010
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First night in Colonia
At El Drugstore, great little restaurant. Check out the huge beer! Patricio, a local brand, which was ok. From the crisp cool days of Bariloche to the balmy sunshine days of....Uruguay. We travelled to Colona del Sacramento from Buenos Aires by fast ferry over the Rio de la Plata, which according to some is the widest river in the world although isn't considered a river at all by others. And I thought Spanish was confusing.
We are staying at another gorgeous little hotel called
Hotel la Mision right on the main Plaza of the old town, or Barrio Historico. That makes it sound much grander than it actually is, because the whole town is about the size of a handkerchief, however an extremely quaint and very cute little handkerchief!
On our first night Lucy and I went to a gorgeous little restaurant / bar called El Drugstore and I ate the freshest fish ever sitting outside in a courtyard on the street, listening to a local man with his guitar, and drinking a local brew called Patricio. It was very atmospheric and very enjoyable. The bill however brought us to our senses as it included a charge for the man and his guitar and also a charge for the cutlery! I should have put them in my handbag (my
Hotel La Mision
Our home for a couple of nights lovely new handbag from Bariloche). However the friendliness of the locals and the relaxed atmosphere in the town soon won us over and now I am a complete convert. It is one of the most chilled out places I have been, and that is even with a boatload of tourists here.
The main attraction is the historic old town, Barrio Historico, which is a designated World Heritage Site by Unesco. It is filled with little cobblestone streets and cute little houses, some of which have been converted to museums. One of them, Casa de Nacarello, is supposed to be an excellent example of an 18th century Portuguese house, so we bought a museum pass for the day. The pass gets you into all the museums, which sounds like a hard day of museum seeing but in honesty they are all within a few metres of each other and actually only consist of a room or three, so we ended up seeing them all. They all have different kinds of things in them - tiles, indigenous artefacts, military things, and one even had remains of some dinosaurs found in the Rio de la Plata. We weren't particularly focussed on seeing
Porton de Campo
Gate to the old city all the museums but kind of stumbled across them and ended up quite enjoying it.
The lady in our hotel had strongly recommended the Colonia Shopping centre, a short walk away. Given that we had spent most of yesterday travelling and not moving much, and given I have made a booking for dinner at a very swanky restaurant in Buenos Aires for tomorrow night and have literally nothing to wear (that red home t-shirt is probably not up to the mark!) we traipsed off to see what it could offer us. We were both bitterly disappointed to find a tiny little shopping centre with all of about 10 shops, none of which offered even the remotest possibility for fine dining. However the walk was good and we managed to circumnavigate almost the entire town (new and old) by foot before lunchtime.
In the afternoon we decided to branch out further and hired one of the local transport options - a golf cart! It was hilarious, but lots of fun and the perfect way to get around. We went up past the beaches to the nearby town of Real de San Carlos, where there was an old bullring and
Calle de los Suspiros
Curiously, this street is quite famous for some reason, which we couldn't quite fathom. a very cute little chapel. It was also a nice chance to get out of the tourist compound and see where the locals lived. It seems it's sleepy everywhere! We had hired the golf cart for two hours, so we had plenty of time to stop off and enjoy another giant beer at the well named Restaurante Tranquilo on the banks of the Rio de la Plata.
The really big news of the day however is that finally I managed to find a laundry. This will come as an enormous relief to my travelling companions I am sure and means that the red home t-shirt gets to live another day!
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Hayden
non-member comment
Happy Birthday
21 today whow - what is it like. nice to hear you will be fresh and clean for the day. You might now have a better chance of meeting a Fabio, Fabrizio or Juan Antonio with nice smelling kit. Have a great day