Quito, Ecuador
Our vacation really started today. Our Galapagos cruise has a full day in Quito for some site seeing and a taste of Ecuadorian culture. Celebrity cruise line plans a full day tour with stops for lunch and a post tour dinner. David and I elected to skip the AM tour as did 3 others in and group so we could sleep in. We had also visited some of these places on our last tour. I’m glad slept in but the rest of the group had a great time.
The rest of our group of 13 did a walking tour in old town Quito where they walked through the area and visited some very ornate churches. Before meeting up with us the group stopped at a hat shop and many purchased Panama hats. Panama hats actually originated from Ecuador, not from Panama.
A bus picked up the 5 of us and dropped us off near our lunch spot, beautiful Abby which has been converted to a restaurant. While waiting for the rest of the group we got to enjoy the beautiful courtyard in the center of the former Abby. There was also a room which housed some of the artifacts from the church as well as some artifacts from the signing of the Ecuadorian National Independence.
The buffet lunch was quite tasty. We got to choose from a variety of traditional Ecuadorian dishes. The seabags and stewed plantains was my favorite, but everything we had was very good.
Following lunch we had a short walk to our tour bus accompanied by a number of very nice local police. Our guide mentioned they just show up on Friday and Saturday because the cruises eat lunch at the Abbyafter their wailing tour and hundreds of street vendors set up just outside along the street selling all kinds of things from $1 bags of fruit to ear buds, to baby wipes. It never felt unsafe walking among the crowd, but it was very crowded.
After boarding the buswe took a 45 minute ride to a cultural center at the Equator.
Many of us had been here before but it was enjoyable for everyone. We had a guide who led us through the different displays and provided some of the history. There were models of traditional Ecuador houses from the past, a display of animals from the rainforest, shrunken heads, and a display of how cocoa is processed.
There is also an area with displays that provided us with hands on experiences on the equator. Everyone got in photos straddling the equator, a few tried unsuccessfully walking a few steps along the equator with their eyes closed, and a few successfully balanced an egg on the end of a nail.
The bus ride back to the hotel was pretty uneventful but we got to see the old airport runway where plans had to come over a mountain, clear some tall buildings, and stop on the short runway before getting to the mountains at the end of the runway. It was easy to see why the airport was moved.
We returned to the hotel with about an hour to spare before heading out for dinner at a nearby restaurant, La Gloria, where we had the opportunity to try more Ecuadorian and Peruvian food. Many of us had the ceviche appetizer which was fried fish in a citrus sauce, and a dish of rice, chicken and plantain wrapped in a banana leaf for our entre.
Tomorrow we had to the Galápagos Islands early in the day so after returning to the hotel we packed our bags and called it a night.