June 27 - Quito

Our cruise/tour package includes a day tour of Quito and today was the day.  We left the hotel at 9am and headed for the old part of town.  It is old enough and still original enough that it has been designated a World Heritage Site.  Other than being in the New World, it looks a lot like the city centers in Spain or Italy.  Narrow streets with shops on the ground floor and apartments above, most with balconies.  There is a lovely square dedicated to the independence of Ecuador from Spain with native trees gathered from around the country.  We were fortunate that the pink one (name forgotten) was in bloom.  From there we went to the Presidential Palace.  They have military guards standing ceremonial duty outside the main entrance and like similar places, they stand and ignore the stream of visitors passing by.   From there we went to several churches.  I am always amazed by how much gold is displayed in the churches while there are scores of beggars right outside.  Something just isn’t right. 

We then reboarded the buses and went to visit the crater of a local volcano.  Ecuador sits right on the Eastern Pacific Rim-of-Fire and has seen regular earthquakes and frequent volcanic eruptions.  We had lunch at a very nice restaurant located right on the rim of the crater, it wouldn’t take much of a shake for it to be on the bottom or the crater.  One of the highlights of the restaurant was the toilets.  Nothing fancy, but the door signs didn’t leave any question about which was which.

After lunch we went to the final stop of the tour, the middle of the earth.  There is a reason Ecuador has that name, the equator runs right through the middle.  Since we have several pictures of us standing in Greenwich astride Longitude Zero, it was clearly necessary to have pictures on Latitude Zero as well.  So after climbing the tower and a short stop in the souvenir shops it was back on the bus for the trip back to the hotel.  Tonight is a dinner and folkloric show.  Could be interesting.  (Wasn’t a folkloric show, just a very talented singer doing opera and popular tunes.  Still a good show)