"The visiting lamp is lit"

....or is it "lighted"?

We're moved into the "flat" that will hold us over until the end of the year.

On the "con" side: The lease is a little short and a little expensive....in addition, the short term nature of it means that getting high speed internet installed (a must) will be a little more troublesome and expensive than ordinarily, but all in all we're pretty pleased.

On the "pro" side: it is a three bdrm/two bath in a very nice neighborhood. it is furnished. it has a balcony in the front, and terrace in the back....and a good sized kitchen (for uruguay). While it doesn't have a view of the water (or much of anything for that matter), very near commercial shopping, and set in a neighborhood with a wealth of shops, tiendas, restaurants, bars, etc. it's walking distance to the coast, and the high end golf club. and, right now the windows are open, the sun is shining and birds are chirping --- pretty good for this time of the year (down here).

The first floor of the two floor duplex is occupied by a critical systems IT company. Very cool bunch. They hooked me up with the wireless connection that I'm using right now and gave me a ride out to the DSL folks to get my contract into them and get them cracking on my own installation next week (hopefully). Good thing, because today is independence day here and none of the inet cafes were open it seems.

So, in summary, like i said in a previous post we've got two empty bedrooms and one unused bath for visitors, but *only until the end of the year*. While we may renew the lease after the spanish owners stop using it at the beginning of March, I'm not totally sure if we'll be here or somewhere else.

One of the reasons the short term lease was attractive was that we could use the time to search for our own place without the pressure/expense of being in a hotel while doing it.

The owners' brother, Antonio, also has a "country house" on the coast between montevideo and punta del este we may be checking out as the weather starts to turn.

More local flavor in my next post --- hasta.

FB