Wednesday morning I had breakfast at my b&b and then took a taxi downtown to the hotel, Reina Isabel, where I would be staying the night with my OAT tour group. It is a very nice looking hotel. After checking my bag here, I took the bus down to the old city to meet up with the city walk. At the meeting point we had to sign in on a sheet with our nationality and hotel. I noticed the signer before me was also staying at the Reina Isabel hotel. So I mentioned the consequence to him only to discover he and his female companion were from Falls Church and Burke respectively! Any way, the city tour was very entertaining and lasted about 3 hours.
A side street in old Quito
The Madonna looking over the city
After the tour, I went with my new VA friends inside the La Compania, the most opulent church inside in Quito. No pictures allowed inside!
The church was built from 1605 to 1765 and most everything inside is gold leaf. The tour guide says there is 47 kilos of pure gold in all the leaf. After this experience, we signed up to for a 5 o'clock tour of the Presidential Palace
This palace is on the far side of Independence Plaza.
While waiting for the tour, I notice a small demonstration that had about just as many police standing nearby - just in case
I learned later that there are demonstrations most everyday as many people here think the President has overstepped his power. Among other things, he has the assembly pass legislation that allowed him to run for more than two terms and to arrest, as terrorists, any demonstrator that is violent - with no definition of what constitutes violent. He is presently on his third term which he won with 51% of the vote but many believe there was widespread corruption.
Once on the tour, we saw the door of the office of the President
the courtyard outside the presidential wing
The meeting room
We also saw some of the past items given by gifts by foreign governments. What really caught my eye here is a crystal bowl given by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But instead of stating was a gift of the United States or even the Secretary of State, it simply has Hillary's signature engraved in the bottom!
After the tour, we all took a taxi back to the hotel. I then checked in and discovered I had a very large room with two double beds. What made the room so big was that it had a 6 X 9 ft. area with no real purpose - other than it had a telephone in it on a stand. Still the room was nice.
At the hotel's breakfast buffet this morning I used the neatest machine. You put whole oranges in a shoot and you can watch the process as the machine turns it into orange juice. The process was fascinating and the juice was great.
After breakfast I met up with my small group. There are a married couple, both retired dentists from Fl, a woman who is a nurse and a PhD from Hawaii, and a retired woman from MS. After meeting with these folks, we took off with our guide, Sofy, and driver, Juan.
This is looking down on Quito from the road.
We then stopped at an old hacienda that goes back to the early 1700s with a chapel which is a hundred years older. After that, we stopped at a rose nursery. The roses not good enough to export are called National Roses and are sold here for $1.50 for 25!
These are really long stemmed roses
The roses growing and being processed
For lunch, we stopped at the house of a local artist, Evita Lopez. She was very hospitable and the meal was outstanding. But the biggest surprise to me was the design of her abode house with these stairs
And the windows she makes which look just like stained glass but really are painted
After lunch we drove to Riobama. This is the largest city (about 200,000) in this area of the country but was destroyed by earthquake about 1900 and then rebuilt in a safer area. For this church, they took the facade from the destroyed church and built a new church behind it.
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