For a window into the soul of a city, take a walk along the waterfront: Think of the Seine’s corridors in Paris, the Promenade Copacabana in Rio or the Esplanade of the Charles River in Boston. Or the ribbon called La Rambla, in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.
One of the longest sidewalks in the world, La Rambla Meanders along the glittering estuaries RÃo de la Plata, past beaches, wine bar and purple-blossomed jacaranda trees, statues and sculptures, football matches and friends involved in talks over talks over the cadets. of Yerba Maté.
If you go in the summer – as the northern hemispheres are shaking in the cold – you can find yourself part of a mass migration of locals who fold chairs in Promenade, virtually turning it into the outdoor lounge of the city.
Promenade sewn together different pieces of Montevideo, a city of about 1.3 million, social and geographically. In this, you will find Uruguaya from all social strata. It is “the thermometer of the city”, such as Natalia Jinchuk, a native and author of Montevideo, described it to me.
With my own thermometer and imagination ran, I was planning a long weekend in Montevideo, a city of flowers that combines the old world and modernist architecture, to enhance my spirit with my own Ramble in La Rambla.
Where friends gather
On a warm morning on Friday, I walked out of my headquarters, the Palladium Business Hotel, on the edge of the modern Pocitos neighborhood and headed to Parque Rodó, an urban jewelry of a park a few miles west along La Rambla.
The red and white walker runs between a busy road and the RÃo de la Plata, a wide floating road that divides Uruguay and Argentina. The trail follows about a west axis, changing names as it goes up from the neighborhood of Capurro, northwest of the old town in the High-End Carrasco area to the east. The most popular section runs from the old town to Pocitos.
Going west to La Rambla, I saw the sailboats coming out of the century old yacht Uruguayo. The women sat in a grassy knoll, their young children to pass. Two friends on a bench seemed to be deeply in conversation over bread and strawberries. A couple put a cup of maté, a caffeine drink in South America, from the same metal straw. Close to a busy skateboard park, I spent some food trucks, including soy Pepe el Rey de las tortafritas (which causes laughter: I am Pepe, the king of fried bread). At Playa de Los Pocitos, a handful of men without shirtless played football in the sand. I stopped in front of a granite plate to read “Sonnet in a palm” by the Uruguayan poet Juana de Ibarbourou and moved from the Stanza final that likened a palm tree to an eternal homeland.
Parque Rodó, the destination in this strand of my care, includes an entertainment park, a lake where you can rent a paddleboat, a “castle” that hosts a small children’s library, the National Museum of Fine Arts and a moderate flea market . It happened in a small square with benches hitting an octagonal water fountain. Both tiles decorated with Arabic designs that reminded me of the Middle East. I found myself on a bench, enjoying the feeling of tiles, warm under my bare feet, and I thought the winter winds scream back to the United States.
Exploring a ‘outdoor gallery’
La Rambla hosts the neighborhoods in separate architectural styles as well as inheritance and parks. With dozens of statues and other works of art, he is a temporary candidate for the UNESCO World Heritage List of Locations-her entrance calls it “a real outdoor gallery”.
Some have described La Rambla as a line that unite the past, present and future of the country. Uruguay’s artist and writer Gustavo Remedi said that the promenade is linking a city that “tends to collapse”. Marcello Figueredo, the author of the book Nonfiction “Rambla”, who offers a detailed look at the waterfront corridor, told me that Promenade was “so limit and escape”, a border between the Montevidos and the rest of the world.
Behind the streets of the city, we headed to the neighborhood of Pocitos, wandering the stripes that look like a rich garden with architectural details: the opposite lines and curves of Art Deco, the Venice and the Windows of Oriel and the Red Flaces. I imagined with hand -painted floor tiles and smelled caramelized sugar through Camomila’s open door, where I liked a lemon and a cord in a small courtyard.
On my way back to La Rambla, I stopped in a small used shop, 3b Bueno Bonito Barato (good cute cheap). Although it was narrow and full, I found a few gemstones, including a pink bolero embroidered with kidney vines and orange, yellow and blue flowers, a design that caused the Jacaranda flowers accumulating outside the sidewalk like drifting snow.
Just below the road, DalÃ, a Kitschy bar and the tapas restaurant, fell my eye on the label “There is nothing more surreal than reality”, and all through it: when someone ordered Jamaica’s cocktail, Bob Marley “Is this love?” Amazing from the speakers as a singer waitress handed the red, yellow and green drink. Everyone came in, putting the lyrics. The waitress also offered a card of a card using a copy of the deck of Salvador Dalà it created. I took out the magician, who, he told me, signaled that if I believe in my own strengths, I would express my dreams. And I thought I just stopped for a drink.
Following the scent of sizzling steak
You can’t go too far in Montevideo without smelling the smoke from many city steaks or Parrillas, meat baking over wood fires. Much of this fragrance comes from the port market, a labyrinth of restaurants and a bar in a hall with a forged iron in Liverpool and is sent to Uruguay in the 1860s.
The market, wedged between La Rambla and the Old Town, would be a seven -mile walk west of my hotel along the content, so when I started on Saturday, I was planning a shortcut on the streets of the city, with plans to come back to Promenade on the market.
Close to the city center, I was happy to find out that the Uruguayans practicing their tango moves for an improvised audience at Juan Pedro Fabini Square – named for the engineer who proposed La Rambla in the city in 1922. After a stone Gate in the Old Town, I traveled tables featuring local art and handmade jewelry along the main pedestrian street connecting the old town and La Rambla.
Then I heard the sound of Candombe, a style of Afro -uruguayan music, coming from a sidewalk. The men who were full of white and blue, and women who wore white turbanies appeared. The men hit the drums and women collapsed their white skirts front and back to the rhythm. Candombe is ubiquitous during the Montevideo Carnival, which runs from January to March.
Eventually, I arrived at the port market, which Mr Figueredo, author of “Rambla”, calls a “full of smoke”. Although meat is indeed a god in the market, even vegetarians will feel a sense of awe. Visitors are sitting elbow-in-the-to-bar at bars that typing grills under elaborate iron arches, the sun filters through skylights. In the area that resembles a cathedral, it was difficult to say the difference between interior and outdoor spaces.
A celebration in the sand
Having timed more than 50,000 steps in two days, I decided to spend Sunday relaxing in the La Rambla section alongside the well -maintained Punta Carretas area, which comes out to RÃo de la plata not far from the old town.
At Baco Vino Y Bistro, I tried Crostini completed with local goat cheese along with a glass of Uruguay Tannat, the country’s national wine. Dark red, rich with fruits, wine packs a punch full of tannin with every sip.
Back to La Rambla, I couldn’t resist control of Artico, a fast-paced seafood cafeteria restaurant, just along the coast full of delicacies such as Quinoa with Shrimp, Squid-Squid of Galicia and an inventive, spicy pionono pionono Tone, cream cheese, arugula, pepper, onion and black olives – all with weight.
La Rambla was in full swing: it was the weekend before the Uruguayan election and a festive mood prevailed. The music appeared under the awnings and supporters of politicians on all sides gave the same thing to passers -by: the blue and white Uruguay flag with a tiny sun in the corner. The cars were hit as they passed. Everyone talked and smiled.
Underneath the beach, people were playing football and volleyball, the sellers sold cotton candies and caramel and clusters of friends, many sitting on these omnipresent chairs, passing around wine bottles. Putting a towel on the sand, I peeled off my dress to reveal a weak piece I bought in Pocitos and claimed a primary spot in the outdoor lounge of the Montevideo.
