Uruguay – Montevideo Ciudad Vieja: Mercado del Puerto

The morning started with some coffee at a shop called Flor (flower). Two coffees and two chocolates was 390 pesos or about $10 USD.

After the coffee, I went on the hunt for some ribeye and outside skirt beef cuts. A Facebook group suggested a place called Gourmeat in the Pocitos neighborhood. It was too far to walk so I took an Uber taxi for about $5 to the store.

Gourmeat had a far better selection of the cuts I like and scored some outside skirt and ribeye. The outside skirt is well marbled but I wanted to verify that it wasn’t inside skirt so I asked the clerk and he said the people here don’t eat inside skirt. Clearly Uruguayans have superior meat taste buds.

Cost of the meat was $1600 pesos or $41 USD

After the beef hunt, I headed to El Mercado del Puerto in Ciudad Vieja. Lots of shops and restaurants but unfortunately many closed on Mondays.

The tout lured me into the restaurant “El Peregrino” with the promise of hot soup. He didn’t disappoint.

Next up ordered the grilled cheese and got this…

The fish of the day was amazing! It was Merzula (Hake) and I had the same fish in Ireland.

The salmon was great too! We met a couple at lunch from Virginia. They were visiting Uruguay as a potential place to retire. It seems there weren’t confident in remaining the United States much longer given the ever increasing costs of insurance, health care, food and other things.

After lunch we headed out to do some local shopping. We picked up the Canary mate herb to make teas and some chocolate cookies and other items. Then we went to see this very long pier in Ciudad Vieja.

It was a long walk down Faro de la Escollera Sarandí.

You do get a great view of Montevideo but those large block obstruct some of the view.

There is also a large shipping terminal here and there are containers stacked fairly high.

Great weather at 58 F in Montevideo.

We walked back to our apartment and saw this old smoke stack.

We landed at our apartment in the early evening and ate some empanadas we bought at the market for dinner.