Click here to view the full album of photos from July 16: http://picasaweb.google.com/jbartucz/20100716?feat=directlink
Leaving Peru
We left Cuzco at 10 am on a flight to Lima, which was unfortunate as we had to pick up our luggage and re-check it and also pay departure taxes at both Cuzco and Lima before making it to Quito. These airport departure taxes are quite annoying. But I digress….
Hotel Le Parc
We arrived at our hotel, Le Parc, right around 4 pm. The hotel is very modern and stylish, but the service leaves something to be desired. In any case, we checked in to the hotel and immediately set out for the downtown market before everything closed for the evening. It was inside a building with about 15 corridors of little shops nestled side-by-side, selling pretty much the same stuff over and over again.
Mercado Central
The Mercado Central had more leather goods than the Peruvian equivalents that we saw and Michelle ended up getting a couple nice scarves for a small price, but it didn’t take us long to get through the whole thing. The stalls that kept our attention were a few nice artistic shops (painting and woodcarving). Interestingly, the market seemed to cater to at least 50% locals and not just to tourists.
La Boca del Lobo
It had started raining by this time, so we quickly headed over to the Plaza Foch, which is Ecuadorian for “Tourist Central”. We found an interesting-looking restaurant called “La Boca Del Lobo” and decided to eat dinner there. The plates were slightly larger than tapas, so we ordered 4 or 5 of them and had a big meal. When the shrimp came, Michelle mentioned that they tasted a bit off. My response was “bah! they’re fine!” and I ate the rest of them. Sigh. After dinner, it was straight back to the hotel as it was raining and we had an early morning ahead of us.
Rain