Our Great Adventure: Colonia del Sacramento Day 228 04/05/2015

We left the hotel just after 0830 and headed to the bus terminal by taxi where we had breakfast at our favourite bus terminal cafe! The bus to Colonia left at 1000 and we drove back west along the coast. We arrived just after 1230, bought our onward tickets to Fray Bentos and walked the short distance to our hotel, the Posada del Angel, just outside the Barrio Historico. After checking in and dropping off our bags we wandered into the historical district to find somewhere for lunch. We both had a craving for soup and luckily enough found a restaurant with soup on the menu. The food in Chile, Argentina and here in Uruguay is good but we are both desperately missing vegetables so it was good to get some in our pumpkin soup. After lunch we had a stroll around the winding, cobbled streets and looked over the Rio de la Plata. The Portuguese founded Colonia in 1680 to smuggle goods across the river to Buenos Aires and to disrupt the Spaniards trade. It was eventually captured by the Spanish in 1762 and held until 1777 when tax reforms in Spain finally permitted foreign goods to proceed directly to Argentina. We'd decided to do a walking tour tomorrow so we didn't want to see too much beforehand. The weather was gloriously autumnal, if a bit chilly, and lovely for walking around the quiet streets. There are a number of museums in the Barrio, some of which are closed on Tuesday's so we took advantage of the multiple entry ticket and visited Casa de Nacarello, a restored Portuguese house, and Museo Municipal, the first museum established in the city with an eclectic array of exhibits including stuffed animals and pre-historic fossils and skeletons! After a drink in the Plaza de Armas opposite the Iglesia Matriz, we walked back to the hotel and spent a few hours continuing to attempt to work out how we get from here to Iguaza, avoiding as many overnight/late night buses as possible. In the evening we walked back to Barrio Historico for dinner. The whole area was amazingly quiet with most restaurants shut. We found one open in Plaza Mayor which had only two tables occupied. Dinner was the usual meat and potato affair, pork chops for Simon and chicken for Diane both served with strange croquette like small round potatoes. No vegetables in sight! It had turned quite chilly before we headed out and we'd left the air conditioning on 'heat' in our room and came back to a sauna!