Pictures from Uruguay: The Old City, and McDonald's

So, today I post some pictures that aren't from my own neighbourhood, but rather from the old city core of Montevideo.

Here are old streets of the old city. As you can see, many of them date to pre-automobile times. Large sections of the old city have been converted into pedestrian areas, which have a number of restaurants and shops.

This is the plaza Matriz, which is the core of old city's pedestrian areas. It's quite nice. Every Saturday there's a big antique fair there.  Note the ornate fountain in the background: it's full of masonic symbols.

Besides shops and restaurants, the old city is also the big center for banks and commercial activities in Montevideo.  It's also right next to the port, so there's a lot of customs houses and brokers and such.

In various places you'll see buskers and streetside-vendors of trinkets and souvenirs.  Almost any tourist to Montevideo ends up here, and cruise ships stop off at the port.  Recently, there were so many of them (and none of the regulation loved by the socialists in government) that the authorities engaged in some sweeping clearing-out of the vendors, though I imagine they'll be back soon.

For a story I'm working on for Break, I also had cause to take some pictures of the local McDonald's:

As you can see, it doesn't look too different from a 1st-world McDonald's.

It also has a "McCafe":

For the most part, Uruguay's McDonalds are basically the same as one you might find in north america. Since the meat and produce they use is from Uruguay, it's slightly tastier. But their McFlurries have a serious problem:

They don't actually blend them. They just dump everything on top of the ice cream and give it to you like that.

And as you can see in the pics above, it's not like this is such a third-world hellhole that they couldn't have the blending technology if they fucking wanted to!  They even have these:

So seriously, McDonalds, what the fuck?

Anyways, that's it for today.

RPGPundit

Currently smoking: Lorenzetti Solitario Egg + Gawith's Navy Flake