Saturday night

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Unfortunately I am having difficulty uploading images to this site. I don't know if the problem is with travelblog or my new laptop. This laptop uses Windows Vista which does create certain problems from time to time. I can always attempt to add pictures later although it would be best to add them as I go along.

We are staying in the old city, or Ciudad Vieja. It is at times charming and other times eerie. I get the impression the city does not want to lose any of its old architecture but at the same time, some of the buildings are long beyond repair. We arrived on a weekend and this part of town is quiet. I hope that is a reflection of the day of the week and not life in general here in the Old City. There are a few small markets that were open on Saturday but no real supermarkets.

There are many dogs roaming about and in fact they reminded me of a cross between the Wild Dogs of Africa and the dingos from "A Cry in the Dark". They are not vicious, they just tend to roam around and we did hear them howl in the park across the street.

It seems the Old City has become a somewhat trendy place for new clubs to open up. We did find that after dark there seemed to be more pedestrian travel in the area and bars/clubs did come alive. Not wanting to do anything crazy for the night since it was still our first day here, we decided to go to a casino at a Radisson Hotel. At first I thought the minimum bets at the roulette table were $20 but then I realized that it was 20 Uruguayan pesos, which is about one dollar. So I bought 500 pesos in chips and got an hour's entertainment for my $25 before the house wound up with my money.

Walking around after we encountered a number of street beggars, a sight not limited to the 'Third World'. One character in particular was annoying, some guy named Carlos, whose light brown hair was arranged in dreadlocks. It seems all beggars introduce themselves by calling you 'amigo'. It is hard to be an amigo to a person I don't even know and it is easy to ignore beggars when they beg in a foreign language (even though I knew most of what he was saying). Carlos was smart enough to beg in three languages just in case his target did not speak Spanish. I was able to understand that he was saying in Italian no less that he needed something to eat. I finally said 'no amigo' and waved him away as we tried to find the block we were looking for.

Not knowing where the buses take people, we just walked most of the time. Some of the streets are designated just for pedestrians and we tended to stick to them. By the time we got back to the apartment there were some boisterous young people in the park across the street but nothing too disruptive as we had no trouble falling asleep.

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