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Published: July 12th 2018
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It was cold and raining when we woke up and went down to breakfast. The four of us sat and discussed what we would do as we had a whole day in Quito until our flight after midnight. We decided to get a taxi and go into town. It was the first time that Don and I had been into town which was about an hour’s drive from the airport. Fortunately the weather improved somewhat, but it remained cool and overcast all day.
The taxi service that the hotel used was a limousine service! We piled into the immaculate car and went into town. Caroline and the taxi driver were chatting in Spanish and we added our comments in a mix of Spanish/English. The journey into town was quite staggering. The road crossed a deep gulch of many many meters down. When we approached the centre of town we were climbing up steeply and saw houses which seemed to be perched at a precarious angle on the cliff face. It was quite amazing!
Caroline had given the driver the address of a vegan restaurant where we
were going to have lunch. The restaurant was run by some young people who greeted us with a hug. The décor was something out of Haight-Ashbury the Californian home of the 1960s flower power era. The restaurant was called Flora. The food was really fantastic. There was a standard meal du jour as well as a la carte. We wanted brownies for dessert but they didn’t have any left so they told us where there was a vegan bakery!
We walked through the back streets of the town. We passed an advertisement for the Galapagos which featured monkeys and lions. We think that they confused African wild life with that of the Galapagos. After about half an hour we arrived at the bakery, El Maple. The choice of cakes was amazing! There were different types of chocolate cake, carrot cake and others! We had a hot drink and a piece of cake each. We paused to take photos with the staff.
We then walked off to examine the old town of Quito. The city was polluted as the cars were old and the buses diesel. We walked through a huge park - Parque El Ejido - which had
some craft stalls. The park entry from a main road of central Quito had a large stone arch.
I had a problem with my breathing as it was so high and so polluted. We found a museum - Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana - and sat in there and after a while we phoned the taxi driver to collect us.
He took us back to the Wyndham Quito Airport hotel and we still had a long wait before our flight. We decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant. So we sat and waited, and waited. Eventually it was time to get the bus and to board the plane for our flight to Houston, the first of the pair of flights which would take us to the Baja peninsula of Mexico.
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