Saturday – Lynne Henderson's Birthday!! With college starting on Monday we had the whole weekend to explore the city and to find a suitable venue to celebrate a very special birthday! The morning took us around Ciudad Vieja and the weekend Flea markets before we walked down the coastal Promenade (the Rambla) right round to Playa Ramirez (our nearest beach 2km away) and then to the Punta Carretas district and more importantly its shopping mall; this area is a very smart residential area with tree lined avenues and based around a decent amount of greenery on the coast. A very disciplined Mrs Henderson left the mall with no shopping bags except for lots of carrier bags from the supermarket which meant a taxi was required to get us back home!

At this point we were very hungry and so headed for Lynne's Birthday meal at the Mercado del Puerto. This is an old Iron market which houses many Uruguayan steak / barbeque houses, the place was alive with music, locals and the bars were bustling!! We read that the steaks here are obscenely large and so once we had selected the restaurant where we'd eat (i.e. being the first one we could find a table at – the place was heaving) we ordered one Lomo to share with some fries and a salad. Not as cheap as Argentina, but just, if not more amazing! We proceeded to have one of the most enjoyable meals we have ever had, not only due to the quality of the food but the general buzz of the place; after the meal we moved to one of the bars also indoors to supp back a few more drinks amongst the locals who were mostly pie-eyed by 5:30pm!! It was just like being in London on a Saturday! It didn't take long for us to find the reason for this...Roldo's; a Uruguayan sweet cider, £2 a bottle and 10.5%. The Market closed shortly after and so we headed out onto the street with the rest of the crowd where we witnessed a small carnival with a procession of African Drumming bands circling the market with massive flags denoting the groups filling the immediate area. There were people dancing in the streets and the music was brilliant. We saw the last 3 groups of who knows how many and then before we knew it, up pop a local band onto a temporary stage next to us who proceeded to play a type of upbeat Latino reggae (best description we can come up with). The streets were filled with people dancing off the effects of several bottles of Roldo's and of course it didn't take long before Mrs H was throwing some of her own Birthday shapes in the mosh area! Once the set was over we dispersed with the rest of the crowd into the surrounding streets before deciding to head home for a relaxing evening in the apartment. Considering there was no plan to the day, it proved to be so much fun, befitting of the occasion, and a day that has convinced us that we want to stay in the city at the weekends.

Sunday: Having read of a large Sunday Market in the Centro district we headed there for lunchtime and found a huge market where you could buy anything there, including some extremely cute puppies and kittens!! The whole place was fairly manic and so after an hour of browsing we decided to cut loose and head to the beach in the Pocitos district. This is a decent sized beach with white soft sand; a place we will definitely be visiting more often! David was a bit puzzled to find that the locals here tend to opt for swim shorts rather than speedos, but it didn't stop him being true to the speedo tan lines!

We walked back from the beach, all 8km of the way and thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the local way of life; so far we can identify that the Uruguayan (well the Montevideo) culture is based around, mate, boozy Saturdays, lie-ins (the streets in the morning are dead!), fishing and family. All down the coast, which is either beach, grassy park areas or fishing clubs the area is packed with families, couples or group of friends sat on deck chairs or the path wall supping mate whilst the men (usually) fish. The evening was relaxed to ensure we were fresh and ready to begin our college course in the morning.