Just add sunlight. And a coffee shop or two.

Tuesday morning we had a rather underwhelming breakfast at the fairly underwhelming hostel (location location location is NOT always everything, unfortunately) and ventured out. It was a very overcast morning but weather.com had promised clear skies later so we opted to spend the morning in a few museums and the afternoon in the sunshine.

Walking around that morning we were both not quite ourselves. There was a depressed feel to the overcast city streets which definitely impacted our moods...

And all the dog poo on the sidewalks was making me cranky. But we enjoyed the Museo Torres Garcia very much (once we stopped repeatedly walking past it in search of it!). The Museo del Carnaval was interesting but really lacking in context or anything that would help me to understand the draw of Carnaval... But hey, it was free and I was able to take some photos inside so I'm not complaining.

As we wandered toward our next eventual destination we walked along the bay and stopped for a great lunch in an artsy theater bar. By then the sun was out, our stomachs were happy and our mood had shifted dramatically.

hadn't seen one of those in a loooooooooong time

By the luck of Kim having to tie her shoe we ran across the Cementerio Central and I got to show her why I can spend hours in these places.

It was amazing in a different way than Cuenca's, on a much smaller scale than Buenos Aires', but much larger and more grandiose than those of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia's - and on a whole different level than Pisac's graves in the cliffside. I hadn't seen mausoleums like that before, nor had I seen family monuments quite like that.

I have been to cemeteries in every country I have visited. Mostly on purpose. (Both continents too, surely - I suspect the Antarctic continent and Drake's Passage are their own cemeteries of sorts.) I wonder what that says about me...

Eventually we stumbled upon a neighborhood near the shore which had the same effect on my mood as when Viki and I went from downtown Lima to the more artsy Miraflores neighborhood. My comfort level suddenly quadrupled and it had nothing to do with safety or the weather shift - I just felt at home. Cafes, shops and dogwalkers were everywhere. The people seemed happier. Like with the cemetery obsession, I don't know what my mood shift says about me either, but it did reaffirm that I'm pretty sure Portland is the right place for me, at least for the foreseeable future.

or maybe it just had to do with these GENIUS step-open dumpsters?

We couldn't get into the bizarre Castillo Pittamiglio (Lonely Planet operating hour fail) but we admired it from the outside...

... and wandered back home, stopping at the mall just long enough to use the always-pristine McDonalds bathrooms. I decided to buy some fries as a "thank you" for all the times their bathrooms have saved my life on this trip. Not sure the fries were worth the $0.35 but hopefully it bought me some good karma.

because I don't already look 12

Walking back through the busy, crowded downtown streets to our hostel, our moods shifted again - and our pace increased noticeably. Interesting. I think we walked about 10 miles in total, and after some well-deserved pizza we called it a day.

I wish the mosquito that haunted me all night had done the same. I keep seeing posters warning about dengue fever. That would be just my luck, to survive this long in several countries and so many different environments, only to get dengue fever in metropolitan Montevideo, Uruguay...