A year and a half ago I was in a private Spanish lesson in Mexico City and I told my teacher we had to stop, so I could try to log on and spend the points I earned traveling with my students. EF offered reward points for each trip made with students, to keep teachers loyal, sort of like frequent flier miles. But, like airline miles, these points were always difficult to spend. Once a year, in January, you could log on at exactly 9 am and try to spend your points for a loyalty trip. For 19 years I tried, but the trips were always full that first instant, and I was unsuccessful. This time, however, while my impatient Spanish teacher waited, I actually got a trip! To Uruguay and Argentina! I knew little about Argentina, and less about Uruguay, but I’m always up for seeing something new.
Fast forward to today, here I am in a beautiful skyscraper hotel overlooking the bay in Montevideo.
In other news, we are now officially old. At LAX before boarding, the airline staff approached Jim and changed our boarding passes from Group 5 to Group 1, writing on them “special assistance.” I’m choosing to look at it as though they were showing us great respect rather than thinking “these clueless elderly people are going to clog the aisles and need help.”
It’s winter in this part of the world. It’s gray and cloudy and it was dark at 5 pm. I’m still happy to be here. I’m always surprised that countries could be so different from on another. Like at some point wouldn’t they run out of ideas for variation? I guess I was expecting something like Mexico or El Salvador, but Uruguay really has its own flavor. La Rambla, its beautiful boardwalk, stretches over 13 miles along pretty beaches and the harbor. It has beautiful modern tall buildings and a contemporary shopping center, but has also kept its traditional charm with narrow streets and tiled sidewalks.
Beef is king here, and the steaks we had for dinner were bigger than anything we’d seen outside of Florence. We could have easily split my Petit Entrecot.
Because of a software update glitch affecting Windows, many of our fellow travelers were delayed and spent the night at various random airports, so I’m thankful it didn’t affect us.
Marsh Travels 