Breakfast in hotel was okay. Nothing special but there was eggs and potatoes and yogurt. That was enough to last a while. We got to the bus stop early and talked to others from our hotel – Debbie, Lynn, and their spouses. The bus did not have Wi-Fi like advertised. Headphones jacks were not working on a few seats. We sat on top in the open air for 3.5 hours. We meant to get off at Caminito but totally missed it since it was a dual named stop at Teatro’s set storage, so we rode around another hour til we got to the Rosedal garden after lots of deliberation. We did get off back at the start first at the small Italian sandwich shop where no one spoke English and had a terrible and expensive meal of ham and cheese sandwich and empenada and water.
I was getting sunburned at this point so we sat downstairs. The second bus also had no Wi-Fi but the girl onboard was very nice and helpful. We got off at stop 19 since it was equally far from the entrance to the free garden as the later official stop for it. After a good walk we got in to it. Pretty nice garden and well laid out but clearly past the season since most was burned up looking. We walked through the very warm and shadeless garden for a good while. There was a massive tree. Some Bridgerton event was going on so there were decorations and dressed up folks. We decided to walk over the bridge at the exit that had messed up stairs due to the event but the Spanish only workers helped mom over. She kept wondering if we were going the right way but we finally found the next stop on a corner and just barely caught a bus as it was about to pass. We then rode all the way back to Caminito.
There we got off this time and walked around. We heard some live dance/music wind down at an outdoor restaurant near the stop around 3pm. We walked around the water and colorful sidewalks then headed down the colorful alleyways. It was ok but nothing special. Really just a poor neighborhood. Mom paid some bum that wanted to pose for her photos in tango poses. He wanted $5 but mom just had $1s he reluctantly took. Saw tons of people drinking mate and lots of stuff with some black haired little comic book girl. At this point I was pooped so we went back to the bus stop and went home but the theater place at the bus stop looked pretty neat ($5) but we were too tired to go in. After getting off the bus around 5 we stopped at a convenience store for chips, 2 ice cream treats, and 5 cokes for $27. Then we went back to the hotel to die. I was badly burnt on forearms and some face.
We learned that night that the ship was running a little late getting back from Montevideo due to a cargo ship breakdown in the way.