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Last week Tiago and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Uruguay- Brazil border. As exotic as Uruguay sounds, I can say now that traveling there was about as scenic as traveling through Nebraska or Iowa. And I don’t know much about Uruguay, but there isn’t much on the border that we saw - no amusement parks, fancy restaurants, cushy resorts, etc. Still, I’d estimate that every week, thousands of Brazilians and probably Uruguaians travel there - Rivera, Uruguay/ Livramento, Brazil. Why?? Because the streets are completely lined with stores that sell various items (many name brands, like Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, etc.) for prices considerably lower than you can find anywhere else in the country - Duty-Free shops! (In most cases, the items sold are commonly found in the US for cheaper still. I used to wonder why my in-laws always wanted to go shopping in New York City or Las Vegas when they came to visit...) Since we gave away/sold practically all of our earthly belongings in January and had yet to replace several things, and since I had never experienced shopping in Uruguay before, we were excited to plan our trip.
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| The hotel restaurant barbecue |
We knew in advance that the hotel we would stay in was no Marriott or Holiday Inn. I would say it wasn’t even a Super 8. In fact, had it been in the US, I believe it would have been shut down years ago. The front desk had no computer system, just a paper calendar book with scraps of paper stapled to it for ‘reservations’. There was an elevator, which had only a thin door on the outside that swung open. It reminded me of the front door on a trailer. The elevator itself felt like it should be in some scary movie where the hero gets caught in it with monsters tearing through the roof. (The monsters wouldn’t have much difficulty at all.) Then, there were the hallways and rooms. If we didn’t know better, we would have thought we’d accidentally checked in to a hospital. The rooms were small, some with a single bed (yes,
A single bed). Ours had a double. There was a small, old school tv mounted on the wall, maybe a 15 or 17 inch screen. Rather than a closet, there was a fairly decent sized wardrobe, and there was a small vanity that looked like it could be an antique. And of course it had a bathroom, complete with toilet, sink and shower. Since it appeared to be clean (other than some spots on the ceiling) and it really was conveniently located right in the middle of all the best shopping spots, we went ahead and stayed in our little hospital - er, hotel room. It was a great decision!! After visiting store after store and accumulating several shopping bags worth of treasures, we were very grateful that we could then go back up to our room, drop them off, and relax for a while before going out again.
