In the meantime, here is the story of our day. Thankfully, it is not as crazy as yesterday (Ruby is now red like her namesake and not at all blue ala Smurfette), however, I think they may have given her some special kind of drugs or herbal meds or SOMETHING! because she is currently off her rocker, well even more so than usual. For example, last night she spent at least an hour wrapped up in her sheets, pretending to be a poorly constructed ghost and singing Somwhere Over the Rainbow. This isn´t like the llama porn incident, this ACTUALLY HAPPENED! And, I would like to state for the record that I was not looking up llama porn, I was studying the intricate dynamics of llama courtship. Honest.
Back to the story.
Today we ventured into the Quito´s Old Town, a collection of Colonial Spanish buildings in the center of Quito. To get there, we had to take a trolley bus (imagine if a bus and a tram had a baby), and let me tell you, Ventura is heavanly compared to their bus systems, you should not take it for granted. On the plus side, it only cost us 25cents.
The Old town is so pretty, all the buildings were lovely blues and yellows and pinks, even the banks were gorgeous. We visted the Grande Plaza, the Cultural Museum, which was this huge pale yellow and white building, filled with ceramic sculptures, a sundrenched courtyard and BOOKS! so many books, it kind of reminded us of the state library in Melbourne, except so much prettier. We then went to the church of San Francisco...yep we walked all the way to San Francisco...nah just kidding :P Let me paint a picture for you, every inch of the San Francisco Church is covered in gold leaf. I´m not even kidding, it was unbelieveable. Unfortunatly, it closed at twelve, so we didn´t get to spend much time there, but Ruby snuck in a sneaky photo of the breathtaking ceiling. An elderly couple also took a shine to Ruby, although for what reason we are still not sure! Haha I kid, they were adorable.
And they didnt steal our stuff, which is always a bonus.
Then we decided to visit Calle La Rhonda, and although it was very obviously positioned on our map, it took us a lot longer to find than it should have. We most probably looked like lameass tourists scratching our heads and looking at maps but we finally made it there...only to find that pretty much everything was closed. Sadface :( but it was still a really lovely street, and we had pleasant strole in the sunshine and took more photos. So many photos.
THEN, we took a taxi up to La Panecillo, which is where the statue of the Virgin of Quito lives. She´s quite large, made completely of aluminium and so is hollow. So what other logical thing would there be to do than to go inside her (thats right, we entered the Virgin of Quito....there´s no way you can say that without making it dirty, so we´re not even going to try). The views from the statue were splendid, hence more photos (we got a bit snap happy). From here we headed back to La Mariscal, which is where we are currently staying, for lunch, yet not before I was invited to dance on the street by a middle aged creepily limbre man, which I respectfully declined.
I think now we are up to date dear friends. Tomorrow we are going to stand directly on the equator....thats right, we will be in the southern and northern hemisphere AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME! Yeah. And then on saturday we are off to Otavalo markets which is very exciting. And then onto the Amazon (insert squee here :) )
We hope that all is well at home, lots of love to you all.
Oh, and one more thing.
Shut up woman, get on my ox.
Love Sally xoxoxox
The Virgin of Quito (oops...not anymore. Surely this is blasphemy of some kind. We apologise. We are young and ignorant.)
Calle La Ronda
Church of San Francisco
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