We had a wonderful week celebrating our first Christmas in Uruguay.
We started off the week by finally letting Zoë ride a pony at the park. Every time we go, she always wants to look at them, but we weren’t sure if she was big enough to ride them yet. She absolutely loved riding the pony so much that she screamed when it was time to get off. We’ll have to let her ride one again soon. It only costs UY$ 25 (U$S 1.28) if you’re in Montevideo and want to check out the ponies at the Villa Biarritz park.
On Wednesday, we took Zoë to Punta Carretas Shopping hoping that she could sit on Santa’s lap and get her picture taken. We were disappointed that there was no Santa! What we thought was Santa’s house was actually Mickey’s Christmas House. So, we walked around and let her look at it, but no Santa pictures this year. Zoë did thoroughly enjoy Mickey & Minnie’s Christmas area, and that’s what matters.
We had heard that Christmas Eve in Uruguay was a big celebration, but we had no idea the surprise we were in for. At about 5 minutes until midnight, fireworks started going off and didn’t stop until after 1 am. Surprisingly Zoë slept through the entire thing!
It was the most amazing display of fireworks we have ever seen. Everywhere you looked, the sky was lit up. Some of them were public fireworks displays, but the majority of them were fireworks set off from peoples’ homes. Pictures could never do it justice, but here are a few to give you an idea of what it was like. We highly recommend spending Christmas Eve in Montevideo.
Christmas morning we woke up and headed out to the living room. Zoë wanted to eat before opening presents so, as a special Christmas treat, we let her have cookies for breakfast ☺
Then she started opening presents. It took her a little bit to get into it, but once she did, there was no stopping her. She had an absolutely wonderful morning opening presents and spent the rest of the day playing with all of her gifts.
You can’t tell from these pictures, but Santa brought her an entire stocking full of candy. She ate almost all of it on Christmas, so she never took a nap on Christmas. Luckily she fell asleep early and got a good night’s sleep.
We know she still has a lot of Christmas gifts on the way from family in the States, so we’ll be posting pictures of her opening her gifts as they arrive each week.