Montevideo

Montevideo chose calm as its form of greatness. It has the continent's longest rambla — twenty-two kilometers of waterfront promenade where the whole city walks, fishes and sips mate facing a river that is already sea — and a carnival of forty nights, the longest on Earth, beating to candombe drums out of Barrio Sur and Palermo.

The sensible traveller starts in the Ciudad Vieja: the Ciudadela gate, pedestrian Sarandí, and the Mercado del Puerto at noon, when the grills become cathedrals of smoke. The afternoon belongs to the rambla — walk as far as the mate lasts — and the sunset to Parque Rodó or Pocitos, the city turning gold with its back to the water.

The Guide's honesty: nothing here is urgent and that is the attraction — anyone seeking vertigo picked the wrong shore of the Plata —; the asado is a lunch, not a dinner; and mate is a rite with rules: you don't ask for it, you wait to be offered, and you never say the first one was delicious.