With retirement looming on the near horizon, I often wonder where to spend my post-working life.  Maybe I’ll slow travel, one-bagging it back and forth between a few select places. Or maybe one particular place will eventually call me home. 

First on my list of potential destinations is Montevideo.  Since 1980, every several years or so, I’ve traveled south to Uruguay to visit family friends.  It’s a magical place where classic Spanish Castellano blends with Italian-immigrant slang, where African descendants beat Candombe drums in post-colonial city streets. 

After all those visits, here’s my five favorite things about the Rio de la Plata capital.

Plaza Independencia

In the heart of the Old City, in the center of Plaza Independencia, the mausoleum of General Jose Artigas, the country’s first presidente, stands silently solemn. Surrounding his statue, diverse architectural towers come to attention, anchored by the bemusing Salvo Palace, its offbeat elegance a symbol of this drumbeat town. 

For me, Plaza Independencia is a relaxing destination after a long morning walk, a place to pause with a coffee, to watch the map-checking tourists and the mate-sipping locals, all perfect portrait models for my furtive urban sketching.  

Prado’s Museum of Art

A ninety-minute walk north from the Old City, just outside the Parque Prado, the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes curates a magnificent collection of large-scale patriotic paintings by Juan Manuel Blanes, such as the Treinta y Tres shown above.

Blanes’ depiction of Uruguayan gauchos and native Americans layer in cultural memory.  On my past visits, I’ve lingered before each canvas, appreciating both their expansive historical scenes and their emotionally intricate brush strokes. 

The museum also displays a lively collection by Pedro Figari, an early-modern, late-life painter whose childlike “naïve-style” honored the mid-19th-century humility of the working-class and mocked the pride of the bourgeoisie.  

Playa Posit0s

An hour south by bus, we’re chilling at the beach in the Playa Positos neighborhood, where the Rio de la Plata meets mid-20th-century high-rise apartments.  The contrast of a bustling city and a wide relaxing strand symbolizes the yin/yang vibe felt throughout this meditative bay. 

I’ve spent late afternoons beneath my own beach umbrella, sketching sun bathers and the inevitable impromptu futbol game.  Not quite a tourist spot, this beach is mostly a neighborhood treasure where families picnic and locals kick off their zapos and spark up a smoke.

The Rambla

Between the beach and the blocks of high-rise apartments, the Rambla’s walking esplanade provides strollers, runners, and bicycle riders with twenty-two kilometers of a stone-mosaic pathway that lines the city’s riverfront perimeter. 

I like to take my meditative walks along the wide Rambla, especially early mornings when the streets are relatively still, relatively quiet, when the playa’s gritty sand has been swept smooth by the night’s receding tide.  Come evening, as the sun sets, as the Rio fires up a dusky orange, locals gather to socialize, their hot-water thermoses filling up their mate gourds.   

Costa Azul

For more than forty years, my favorite Pocitos beach-view café has been Costa Azul, the one at the corner of Juan Benito Blanco and Felix Buxareo.  That’s where I sit after long days of walking and sketching, where I can order up a chivito, Uruguay’s classic sizzling steak sandwich, and take long sips of the seaside air.

Retirement is not only the end of a career; it’s also the start of something new, a dawning of opportunities.  As I have for decades, I’m likely to keep visiting Montevideo, staying perhaps for a season or two, then moving on to another locale.  Or maybe, after four decades, I’ll put down roots and settle into the castellano sand.

How About You?

Got questions about Montevideo?  Where are you thinking to retire?  Let me know in the comments.