Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label tango

Two-day Sightseeing Itinerary for Montevideo

Museo del Carnaval (Carnival Museum) Montevideo amazed me with all it has to offer its visitors. I was lucky to have met up with a good friend who was living in Uruguay for a few months and she had a lot of great ideas of what we should see and do. So off we went to explore the city starting at the Carnival museum which chronicles its beginnings in the 18th century and the huge influence of African culture in the longest carnival celebration in the world. More on this under a separate post. Address: 218 25 de Agosto de 1825 Street across from Montevideo Port and next door to the Mercado del Puerto. Itinerary Day 1 Carnival Museum Mercado del Puerto (Port Market) Lunch at Es Mercat  Dessert stop at Alfajores del Uruguay Teatro Solis solo dance performance (free) Coffee break at Solis Theater café Teatro Solis evening modern dance performance Day 2 Salvo Palace Tango museum Independence Square Metropolitan Cathedral Constitution Square Lunch at Jacinto Zabala Square Mercado del Puer...

Colorful La Boca

Of wall the many attractions in Buenos Aires, I found the neighborhood of La Boca to be the most fun and interesting of the bunch. Though the  conventillos (tenements) here are restored and freshly painted, this neighborhood is still one of  the oldest, the home for many Italian immigrants in the 1940's. Colorful buildings shown above line the streets of La Boca. It is said that past residents of this barrio used remaining paint they found in the docks to coat their wood and corrugated zinc dwellings. This explosion of colors adds a festive air to the neighborhood. Narrow alleys like this separate the conventillos in La Boca. Living in such close quarters, there's not much privacy in these tenements. The courtyards became the living room of residents and this is where the celebrated tango was performed by the immigrants who were said to have introduced the tango to these shores. A whimsical mural in the Antiguo Mercado de La Boca remi...