Next to the farmacia is a door that leads to an upstairs apartment that leads to a family that leads to a mom and dad that leads to a warm place for kids to grow up. When you look at a street of closed doors, faded or chipped or cobbled together, one never knows what is behind them. It is hard to guess what this schoolboy will see when the door to his home opens and he walks into his family bosom.
Kids don’t ask for a lot but they need a home, kind words and behaviors towards them, security, love, and a sense of belonging. These youngsters are brothers and sisters and they are, this afternoon, busy turning back into kids after school has spent all day trying to civilize them.
This afternoon this little boy knocks, peeps into a little slot where mail is dropped, yells out if anyone can open the door and let him inside?
He is excited and ready to dump his school stuff on his bed, then go out into the streets to play soccer with friends.
School isn’t for little boys anymore, but they still have to go.
When visitors get off cruise ships at the Port of Montevideo, one of the first places they visit is the Mercado Del Puerto, a collection of steakhouses, gift shops, and art galleries under one big tin roof.
Uruguay is famous for wine and steaks and inside the Mercado you have multiple choices in a meat lover’s paradise. Early in the morning, around nine, chefs load firewood into their ovens and by lunch the smell of cooking meat says to ” come on in.”
This afternoon chefs are grilling, a girl markets wine from Uruguay to tourists, waiters scribble orders on small pieces of paper. Talk fills the place with large and small groups enjoying the Mercado’s savory ambiance.
From the Mercado a visitor can fan out into commercial and residential side streets and find boutiques, art galleries, neighborhood restaurants and local stores that depend on residents more than tourists. This port area, neglected, is slowly being reclaimed by a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Later in the day, I too enjoy an enormous steak with fries and a beer, for dinner. Sailors at the next table talk loud in German and drink prodigious amounts of beer with their brauts.
Food, eating, and drinking are some of man’s fondest activities.
Uruguay steaks don’t have to apologize to any chef and I recommend the Mercado as a good place to meet a steak in person, cooked any way you want.
Living just down the block, I would be negligent not to eat here as often as possible.
One of the joys of travel is meeting foods you have never tried before, and enjoy foods you love cooked better than you can cook them yourself.
Regardless of where I travel, one of the most asked questions I get is – “Do they have a McDonald’s?”
There is a McDonald’s in Montevideo, Uruguay. It wasn’t sought out, isn’t on my list of important things to do, but it is a cultural landmark that marks the landing of American habits to every corner of the world.
This McDonald’s is not flashy but the familiar arches beckon me to come closer. Employees wear uniforms just like they do at home, freshly washed and ironed. Coffee is made in an expresso machine and costs two dollars a cup, cheap for Montevideo.
Sitting outside, at one of the benches under a grove of trees, I feel right at home.
We Americans have landed and planted our flag.
Wherever I go; There we are.
In worn areas of most world mega-cities, there is street art, some commissioned, some spontaneous.
This art can occupy an entire wall like our sixteen foot lady. It can be part of a series of images on a parking lot wall like our two faced head. Street art has no pretensions. It doesn’t care about frames, security guards, tickets or reviews.
Street art is a delight. Street music is a delight. Street food is delicious. Street people are full of edges and angles. Street talk is coarse and poetic.
Art and artists fight around the world to move into public places so the public can enjoy their muse. Gallery walls are too small, too exclusive.
What is sad is so few of these people walking and driving past pause and admire the images, touch them,or have arguments about them.
You can look at this street art for free, as long as you want. You can linger. You can scratch your head. You can laugh at the boldness.You can even write your name on the wall if you wish.
Why are people, these days, too busy to stop and look at what is right in front of them?
When you are looking for produce in the Port area you are not near the grand shopping palaces you visit in the United States.
Groceries in the U.S. display well groomed produce as you walk down waxed shiny floors,choose fruit and vegetables from clean bins with sprinklers that mist to make sure the product always looks fresh.There are plastic bags to wrap your choices and stocked product is carefully unpacked from boxes and inspected with blemished items thrown out. You would never suspect vegetables came out of the dirt, or fruits came off trees from the way they are lovingly presented.
In Montevideo, around the Port, there are small fruit and produce stands on the streets. Tourists and residents buy out of these wooden boxes under tarps that protect from too much sun and rain.
Uruguay is famous for wines and beef production, and has one of the world’s largest underground aquifers, but citrus, fruits, and other vegetables are shipped in from Central America, South America and beyond.
This stand has basics – cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, chili’s, lettuce, potatoes.
There is something comforting about buying bananas, apples, carrots and lettuce out of beaten up, chipped, scarred wooden boxes. The beauty is you only have to walk a block to buy what you need.
I’ve been told that you should, in foreign places, eat only things you can peel so I’m careful about my purchases.
Time, that moves too fast the older you get, slows to a more comfortable clip when you have to walk to do your shopping.
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