Trip to South America: Day 8 Colonia, Uruguay

On this day, which was a Monday, we took the Buquebus (which is a ferry) from Buenos Aires to Colonia. We uneventfully boarded the ferry, and in order to sit by windows, the four of us split up on different rows. Some guy ended up sitting with me, which was fine, he was very enthralled with the books that he was reading. When the boat landed, everyone was lining up to get off, and like all other passengers, I got my stuff together and was ready to leave. The guy was a little awkward at this point, he knew that I was ready to get off, but he just kept sitting there reading and I couldn't get out. Eventually Andrea saw me stuck and yelled for me so that he had to let me out. So we landed in Colonia, and were supposed to meet up with a tour bus. We couldn't find the right bus, so we left the ferry terminal and walked a ways and didn't see anything, so then we walked back. I found someone who looked official and asked them about our tour, and our bus had already left, but there was a "Spanish" bus of the same tour, so we got on that bus, and got dropped off at a restaurant for lunch. Lunch was pretty good, I had chicken and mashed potatoes, one of my favorite meals. After we finished eating we had a little time before we were supposed to meet up with the "English" tour, so we walked down the street and went into a couple shops. Finally it was time for the tour. We boarded a bus and went for a drive. We saw the old bullfighting ring and made a stop at the beach for about 10 minutes. Next we went make to the main street, and got off the bus and walked towards the old city. I love the old part of Colonia! There are cobblestone streets, and there is a city wall, and you can walk through the gate. So our tour continued, and the guide pointed out the oldest street, the lighthouse, a museum, and the church. We went inside the church, the guide kept talking and I stopped listening. Eventually the tour ended and we had a couple hours of freetime. We meandered our way back the way we had come in, stopping in every shop that we passed. I bought a bookmark, and I have no idea what everyone else bought. I really wanted to climb the lighthouse, so Grisham went with me to climb the lighthouse and when we got half up we yelled to Colette and she joined us. We then climbed to the top, which had a good view of the town and the river. When we climbed down, we kept walking and went in some more little shops, ending up at the first shop we had gone in after lunch. There I bought some post cards and crosses for Jess and Lanae - normally crosses are easily found, but these were the first ones that I had seen so I just bought them. At this point we had about an hour left until our ferry left to take us back to Buenos Aires, so we went to a cafe to have a snack. I had some alfajores and hot chocolate...the hot chocolate was good, the alfajores weren't really all that spectacular. Grisham and Colette got a meat-olive-chip board, and fed some of their stuff to a dog that was lingering at our table. After our snack we met back up with our bus, boarded the ferry, and headed back to our hotel in Buenos Aires and went to bed.