Old Town Quito, Ecuador

Day 2:

We woke up to our first daylight in Quito and our first impression was BEAUTIFUL! Mountains surround us and the city is larger than we expected. Quito is comparable to Barcelona, Spain but on a smaller scale. However, the beauty are the mountains and how the city is situated in a deep craves where airplanes fly into.

As far as altitude sickness (Quito is 9300 ft above sea level), we didn’t get sick. We think it attributes to exercising regularly and drinking a lot of water prior to our visit. You do get winded fast when climbing stairs or walking up hills because of the thinner air.

Another thing we noticed was Ecuadorians love dogs (our kind of town because we love dogs). There are dogs everywhere. Sadly, there are a lot of stay dogs roaming the streets. We don’t think you can walk a block without seeing a stray dog. The difference between an American stray dog and an Ecuadorian stray dog are the breeds. An Ecuadorian stray dog look like dog you would find in a pet store and not a mutt you’ll find at the pound. They are cute.

We took the trolley (25 cents), which looks like two buses connected together, to Old Town. The first thing we noticed in Old Town is there are cops at every corner (really). Quito is trying to overcome Old Town’s stigma of a city of crime. We felt safe there; however, you can never let your guard down because pick pocketing is extremely high and we didn’t want to be victims, i.e., putting half of our money in our shoe or in our underwear, not carrying a backpack, and traveling in a group.

Old Town is beautiful – very historic and full of life. We visited several churches – Inglesia de San Francisco, La Bisilica, and La Compania church. We walked around town to Plaza San Francisco and Plaza de la Independencia. After a good jaunt sightseeing around Old Town we were hungry. We ate at a café on the top of the hill overlooking the city called Café Mosaico. The restaurant has breathtaking views and we can definitely see why they are highly recommended in all the travel books. There, we had our first Ecuadorian dish called Llapingacho and we LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT! It is sort of an all-in-one meal that includes a fried egg, sausage, beef tenders, potato pancakes (our favorite), and vegetables. We also had a potato soup with cheese and avocado. Yum yum good! After a good meal we had the opportunity to chat with the owner of the restaurant, Alex and his wife - both Americans who have lived in Ecuador in the past 10 years.

In the evening we went to La Boca del Lobo for drinks – another highly recommend restaurant in all the travel books. There, we discovered our second favorite thing – a Peruvian drink called Pisco Sour. Our mouths are watering just sitting here thinking about it while we write this blog.

Transportation around Quito is very inexpensive. Taxis are cheap and the buses are cheaper. We are going back and forth on either taking a 3 ½ hour taxi ride south to Banos which will cost $85 one way, or take the bus for $3.40 one way. The bus option sounds very attractive because of the cost, BUT we’ve read on several travel posts that theft is a problem on the buses. Furthermore, we’ve heard that the bus terminal is a bit shady and can be dangerous. Therefore, tomorrow we are going to check out the bus terminal and familiarize ourselves with the facility without carrying any bags or valuables. We want to take the bus north to Otavalo Market on Saturday and south to Banos on Sunday.