Saturday evening, sitting in the lobby of La Casa Sol. It's cold (by which I mean high 50s) and raining, as it was last night when we went out to watch the 6th of December parade in honor of the anniversary of the founding of Quito. The parade went on despite the rain, with all the dancers and musicians, but it proved too much for us, so we went to the gringo-run Vietnamese restaurant next to our hotel for noodles.
Tomorrow, we fly to Cuenca, in the Southern Sierra. I only got a small sense of Quito. I suspect that it is one of those places that charms you the more time you spend here. While we didn’t experience all that much of it, it seems to have much to offer: A fantastic, very large and functioning historic center; a great sense of civic pride, as we saw first hand during this fiesta week; a location at the base of some seriously high and awesome mountains; and it is clearly a cultural capital (although we didn’t see too much of this).
Yes, it is traffic-choked, largely unattractive outside of the historic center, and has a reputation for dangerous streets. But I would be willing to give it some more time. And in any event, it looks like we’ll have that opportunity, as Quito is literally at the heart of the country, and we’ll be coming back through here en route to other parts.
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