Day 156 (November 25): Uruguay, Off to a Bad Start
I woke up next to Ali, because she had woken up overnight with a particularly bad bloody nose (again). Elise woke up on a rock-hard bunk bed with a paper-thin pillow because Henry had terrible nightmares (again). By the time I got back from the convenience store with eggs, butter, bread and OJ, the toilet had clogged and overflowed and almost everybody was crying. A short while later, we had rooms booked at the nearby Hyatt.
The apartment in question is the first floor of a townhouse and most of it used to be a garage. Even if the plumbing worked, the beds weren't reclaimed from a house of torture and the kitchen was bigger than the RV's, we wouldn't have lasted long here. I'm not sure there were actually six of each item in the kitchen. There were do shelves or drawers onto/into which to unpack our clothes. Fortunately, the cost was only $45/night and we were willing (and able) to walk away. Sometimes your time and your sanity is worth more than your money.
Before we left, we mistakenly attempted school. The lack of sleep, the contagious stress, the allergies, the smell from the bathroom...it wasn't meant to be. We packed up 13 of our 14 bags, leaving "school" sitting on the kitchen table, and relocated to the Hyatt four blocks away.
It wasn't pretty but by the end of day we had eaten lunch, spent time in the hotel pool, Elise had exercised, we had eaten dinner, and laid ourselves onto genuinely comfortable beds. With good wifi, we were optimistic about doing school the next day in the hotel (I had fetched the bags, having given up on the idea of using the apartment as a classroom).
The food we had eaten was good. I had the local "Chivito," which is like a burger with a steak instead of a patty, usually served with a fried egg and anything else the chef thinks would be funny to add on a burger. Elise had a great pizza. I'm pretty sure the rest had burgers or buttered noodles. For dinner we went to a recommended asado (steakhouse) and fared somewhat better but still, after the kids went to bed, we had to contemplate what we would do if the kids went on hunger strike during the trip.
This is a prospect we've worried about for a long time. Plenty of blogs and podcasts offer advice on encouraging your picky eaters to broaden their palates but we are confronting the kids rejecting their favorite comfort foods because of minor deviations: the butter noodles tasted funny (al dente). The burger smelled like fire (cooked on actual embers). Henry spent a lot of the evening bawling because of our efforts to get him to eat protein.
But at least we were sleeping in a lovely suite on terrific beds with extraordinary bathrooms and the knowledge that English-speaking staff were one floor below us. Even better, we slept all night with no bloody noses and no nightmares!
The apartment in question is the first floor of a townhouse and most of it used to be a garage. Even if the plumbing worked, the beds weren't reclaimed from a house of torture and the kitchen was bigger than the RV's, we wouldn't have lasted long here. I'm not sure there were actually six of each item in the kitchen. There were do shelves or drawers onto/into which to unpack our clothes. Fortunately, the cost was only $45/night and we were willing (and able) to walk away. Sometimes your time and your sanity is worth more than your money.
Before we left, we mistakenly attempted school. The lack of sleep, the contagious stress, the allergies, the smell from the bathroom...it wasn't meant to be. We packed up 13 of our 14 bags, leaving "school" sitting on the kitchen table, and relocated to the Hyatt four blocks away.
It wasn't pretty but by the end of day we had eaten lunch, spent time in the hotel pool, Elise had exercised, we had eaten dinner, and laid ourselves onto genuinely comfortable beds. With good wifi, we were optimistic about doing school the next day in the hotel (I had fetched the bags, having given up on the idea of using the apartment as a classroom).
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| The kids love posting with murals of wings, which are a thing here. |
The food we had eaten was good. I had the local "Chivito," which is like a burger with a steak instead of a patty, usually served with a fried egg and anything else the chef thinks would be funny to add on a burger. Elise had a great pizza. I'm pretty sure the rest had burgers or buttered noodles. For dinner we went to a recommended asado (steakhouse) and fared somewhat better but still, after the kids went to bed, we had to contemplate what we would do if the kids went on hunger strike during the trip.
This is a prospect we've worried about for a long time. Plenty of blogs and podcasts offer advice on encouraging your picky eaters to broaden their palates but we are confronting the kids rejecting their favorite comfort foods because of minor deviations: the butter noodles tasted funny (al dente). The burger smelled like fire (cooked on actual embers). Henry spent a lot of the evening bawling because of our efforts to get him to eat protein.
But at least we were sleeping in a lovely suite on terrific beds with extraordinary bathrooms and the knowledge that English-speaking staff were one floor below us. Even better, we slept all night with no bloody noses and no nightmares!
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