Sandy World Tour 2010: February 2010

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Feb 26 Uruguay

Today we travelled by fast ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia in Uruguay - a journey of about 1 hour. Colonia was a strategic location on the Plate River and since the 1600's has been both a Portuguese and a Spanish colony a number of times.

Colonia

Our guide, Alejandra, showed us many interesting sites including this Spanish church from the 16th century.

Debra at the bullring

We visited this bullring which was built in the early 20th century but was only used for 2 years before bull fighting wasw outlawed in Uruguay. As you can see is is suffering from a century of neglect.

Portugese fortifications

The Portuguese built this wall to repel the Spainiards

Map of the River Plate

This map shows Buenos Aires on the south bank of the river and Colonia on the north bank. The river is about 40 kilometres wide at this point.

History of Colonia

Lunch

We had lunch at a restuarant on this square.

Lunch

We were serenaded by a Uruguayan guitarist and we bought his CD and posted it to our Uruguayan friend Nene, who lives in Tweed Heads.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Feb 25

Feeling much better today after a good nights sleep and we are moving from the Sofitel hotel to Ayres Recoleta Hotel which is near the famous cemetery which we visited on Day 1.

Modern Art

We visited this impressive gallery which houses the private collection of a wealthy Argentinian

National Museum of Decorative Arts

We also visited the National Museum of Decorative Arts which, like a lot of public institutions, is housed in a building which was previously a private residence, built in the french style.