Another outing into Ciudad Vieja

We went to the Mercado del Puerto this weekend. All in all in what a really cool place, the first kind of "touristy" thing I've done down here (with theexception of taking obnoxious ammounts of photos of mundane things) and probablly one of the most fun outings yet. A pretty good crew of us went downthere, seven people I guess-2 germans, 1 dane, 3 Mexicans, y yo.

The mercado(market) is an interesting little place somewhere between the port and the center of the ciudad vieja(old city). Ciudad Vieja reminds me a lot of the French Quarter, kind of pretty to look at in a dirty way, and kind of unsavory. As one of the Germans put it, "You don't really want to be aroundthe port at night, it's where all the trash settles". The building itself is quite interesting, I have no idea what purpose it served in a past life, itkind of looks like a bombed out train station. A lot of interesting architecture and semi-open aired. This whole place is filled with really big grills. You can grab a bite to eat at the counter around one of the independent little grills, or you can go into one of many restaurants and put food from their grill in your mouth.

We ended up in one of the restaurants, led upstairs to a table by the window. We had a nice view of an old plaza outside and all the gypsy sort of peopleselling their stolen or knock-off goods there. The prices were a bit more expensive than some other places, as it's a tourist trap, but the food is among the best in the city and relatively cheap compared to something of equal quality in the U.S. I had a very good steak, although I should have spent a few more pesos for the 'lomo'(llama?) cut, a caprese salad, and potatoes roquefort for about $25 U.S. This included the tip and the medio y medio theybrought us. Medio y medio is a Uruguayan concotion that was originally only available at the Mercado del Puerto. It's a half and half mixture of dry white wine and champagne. When they brought us out little flutes with the bread I figured it was a complementary sort of thing but I'm pretty sure itpopped up on the check.

The meal was concluded with a long walk down the Rambla/beach/coast and a rousing game of team WAR(RISK) in which my NAFTA Mexican American alliance hadvictory snatched from our hands by the cunning German duo. I don't think I'm even going to touch making a joke there.

That's about it really, it was really fun though and I'm going to watch some tango or something tonight so that should be pretty cool.

Ciao