2 Days in Quito

We´ve been here for two days now and there is already a lot to tell. I´ll start at the beginning.
Yesterday we woke up at our hostal, Chicago Hostal. It´s a great place, with very friendly people, although the mattresses are soft and shaped like banannas so our back are a little sore in the mornings. We have free breakfast here consisting of a plain croissant-type roll, scrambled eggs, pineapple slices, and black tea. I should mention that our breakfast is served on a terrace at the top of the hostal, which is about 5 stories high and up on a hill so there is an awesome view of the city while we eat. This city is absolutely sprawling. It´s about 10,000 feet high nestled in between two giant mountain peaks. The city is only about 2 or 3 miles wide but it is incredibly long and buildings spread out as far as you can see.

After breakfast we headed out to walk around in Old Town which is the historical center of Quito with lots of restored buildings. This city is packed to the brim with people, noises, sounds and colors, but we´ve felt very comfortable and safe walking around. A lot of the streets have dates for names like ¨6 de diciebre¨ which, I think is when Quito gained its independence from Spain- the first of the South American cities to do so we were told. That was in 1809 so if you do the math, this year was their bicentenntial. Turns out that we arrived the day AFTER the huge celebrations for the bicentennial ended...oops. Oh well.

We started our walking tour at Plaza Grande, the main central square of Old Town and immediately took a tour of the nearby cathedral. We also so a few museums in the area, but more exciting was lunch. We had chicken-fried steak that was absolutely amazinga and apparently a local specialty. It was 20 bucks. We thought this was a steal but then today went for lunch at a place where we had corn soup (the corn here has kernels that are about 10 times bigger than our corn and its delicious), lamb chops, desert, drinks, and it was 4 dollars...total. So we learned our lesson that lunch should not cost more than 5 dollars per day.

Today we climbed up the nearby Basilica de Voto which allowed you to climb up like 6 different ladders to the top of the bell tower for another awesome view of the city. I rang the bell at the top which I think was illegal but who knows. We also hiked to the museum of cultural history where we saw tons of different carvings made by local people thousands of years ago. Many of them had men holding their weiners which was pretty funny. The highlight was a carving of a guy on his back holding his member that was about 15 times larger than it was supposed to be (I know how he feels). Anyway, we´ve done and seen much more but we only have so much time so that will have to do for now. We are having tons of fun and meeting lots of interesting people at the hostal. You´ll hear about it all later. Hope everyone is doing well!