Montevideo - Sending postcards could be so easy

As a little 'excursion' from Buenos Aires, we took the ferry to Montevideo. For once, I handed over the responsibility to Tom to book a ferry. He found a cheap option, supposedly a ferry directly from Buenos Aires to Montevideo for €50 per person round trip. Actually not bad.
When we arrived at the harbor, we sat in the boarding area for 2 hours after check-in without anything moving. Eventually, with a one and a half hour delay, we were finally able to board the ferry.
After just one hour, we arrived in Colonia del Sacramento. But since the ferry continues to Montevideo, we found a seat near the power outlets and waited for it to continue.. And the ferry emptied :D when another 10 people were on the ship who were also getting ready to leave, we became a bit restless. It turned out that a bus goes from Colonia further to Montevideo and there are no ferries to Montevideo.
So we hurried off the ferry, found the bus, and spent the next two hours there.

Arriving in Montevideo, we relaxed in the hotel for the rest of the day and prepared for the following day. First, we took a city tour, had the best seats on the bus, and thus had a great view of all the sights.

However, the announcements about the sights were strange.. If the bus was too fast, the announcement was just interrupted and the next one started.
But Montevideo is a beautiful city. After the first complete round, which takes about an hour and a half, we continued to the Palacio Legislativo - the parliamentary palace.

From the outside, it's already a beautiful building but from the inside, it's even better (as we will find out the next day). Since we were doing the tour on a holiday, the building was closed, so we should/wanted to come back the next day. So we made our way to the Mercado Agricola. Here there were various restaurants, bakeries, butchers, confectionery sellers, and cheesemakers. In the end, we decided on the Cubans, which we did not regret.

After that, we took the city tour bus again (you can ride with it for 24 hours, we got on early at 11 am, so we can ride until the next day at 11 am) and to the next mall - once again. We were still searching for a new sweater for Tom to replace his old and very worn-out cardigan. But the stores weren't enticing and quite expensive. We keep realizing how cheap everything is in Germany. Especially when you still live with your parents :D

With the last city tour bus, we went back to the final stop at the harbor. From there, we walked back to the hostel, which was at the other end of the old town. The old town is apparently a neighborhood where you shouldn't walk alone at night - at least that's what we were told at the reception, as at night all the alleys are abandoned.. so you don't know who is wandering around there..

The next day the first stop was the Prado-Nueva Savona, a park that looked quite nice from the bus. There wasn't much going on here, there was a pretty steep bridge, which was quite funny.

A class ran past us, they probably just had a fitness test :D (fortunately, I don't have to do that anymore!). The rose garden that was advertised in the city tour announcement was already quite faded, so we walked towards the parliamentary palace, where the guided tour of the building started at 3 pm. A lady showed us around since we were the only ones for an English tour, we basically had our private tour for a total of €6 :D

The official entrance hall is a sight for sore eyes! 90% marble and the rest is granite and other rocks.. there are stained glass windows and mosaics, beautiful sunken columns, and everything renovated or very well preserved.

There are also 4 courtyards being renovated, but the one 'unrenovated' one we saw was also beautiful.

At the end of the day, we explored Plaza Independencia a bit more, as the next morning we were heading back to Buenos Aires.

The square itself is quite nice, but there's not much to see in detail. In the old town, there are some pretty buildings, and as we were walking through, the army band came by and played music - even newer songs like 'we will rock you'. But we were stressed out searching for a DHL shop to send off our expensive purchased postcards (€3 postage per postcard... unfortunately, we only realized that after paying). Since the post office and DHL don't cooperate in Uruguay, the national post office doesn't accept international items and can't even provide information about where we need to go. After being chased by various contact points throughout the old town (I already felt like Asterix in Asterix vs Caesar, who is supposed to pick up clearance A38), we finally found the DHL shop after an hour of searching.

So sending postcards from Uruguay is not recommended, and if you do receive one, you should frame it :D the effort behind it...!

Next stop: Foz do Iguazu, Brazil