I decided last night that I wanted to explore the city today. So, before I left the handful of our group left in Quito, I told them that i'd be at their hotel at 8:30 the next morning if anyone wanted to join me. After another great breakfast here at my hotel, I walked the empty, sunday streets to the Nu house hotel lobby. A small group of my friends came down for breakfast, and once everyone had eaten, I had 3 of them with me to see the first site. We took a taxi to the TeleferiQo; a cable car which takes you up the side of Pichincha Volcano here in Quito. Since there was no traffic on the roads, we got their fast and were surprised that this decent cab ride was only $5. I want these cabs back home! Anyway, we got in the ticket line and paid $8 for the gondola ride up - it was a beautiful view of Quito the whole way which reminded me very much of the Grouse mountain gondola which gives you a view of Vancouver. As we approached the top, we realized that we really didn't think when putting on t-shirts for a windy mountaintop. It was kind of chilly thanks to the gusting wind, however we countered that with hot chocolate from a cafe up top. After getting several pictures from the viewpoints, we noticed a higher up lookout that we decided to climb up at a decent pace. Didn't actually realize until later that we were 4100m above sea level here and really should have been taking it easy. No wonder we had crummy cardio. At the top, there were actually a couple llamas, but for the most part, the city view was what we were looking at. It was getting to be close to 11 now and one of our group had to leave for the airport at 12. We took the tram back down, flagged down a taxi and got ourselves back to the hotel for 11:30. We waited in the hotel lobby to say goodbye to the couple of people leaving at this time, then the bulk of our group went for lunch. In a cafe/restaurant in the main square, I actually got to order myself some lasagna which was great. I went to pay with visa, but you needed a $15 dollar minimum, so I paid for another as well, and got myself some needed change from them for the taxi. Not too long after lunch, I wanted to go to the last big site of the city (that was recommended to me) - the historic city centre. At 2pm when everyone was forced to check out of Nu House, I had a couple people who were eager to join me. We got in another $5 taxi and were taken right into a historic old plaza. This place had a parliament building, cathedral and tons of people packed around. As cool as this place was, it seemed to also just be a casual hangout place for a lot of locals. After taking in this plaza, we continued on to see one of the more famous churches: la compañia. This huge church would have been impressive just by it's size and design on the outside, but of course, they had to go all out. The inside was entirely covered in gold! Crazy, intricate design covered in shinning precious metal just kept you looking everywhere. There were tons of statues, paintings and all sorts of art. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed so you'll just have to take my word on this. We then continued on through all sorts of random streets. Old architecture was everywhere so we really weren't needed to go to specific sites. They had a statue of an angel of some sort on top of one of the hills, so when it was in view, we all took pics of it. We came across a couple of museums during our walk, but one didn't look all that interesting and one closed early on us. No matter, the last thing we definitely had to see was their giant basilica. We hadn't really heard much about it, however you could see it from kilometres away and it looked worth checking out. Our map took us up a huge, steep hill but we eventually made it here. It was massive and had two main towers, one being a clock tower. I managed to get a signature picture of me with it - if you saw my Europe pics, you'd recognize it. We also found out that for $2, you could climb the towers. An elevator took us 3 floors, then we were stairing it. As we got higher and higher up the clock tower, the stairs became sketchier and sketchier. Eventually it was a thin, metal, spiral staircase that took us through the clock and up to the bell tower. Again, we got stunning views of the city. It turned out that afterwards, we could climb the second tower, but this would be more of a challenge. We first had to cross a rickety, wood bridge inside the building then climb a ladder in the dark. This took us to a platform outside the tower. From here, we had to climb the tower from the outside, with a metal staircase nearly as steep as a ladder. They put chicken wire around the stairs to somewhat reinforce it, however it definitely wouldn't pass north american safety standards. Slowly but surely, we made it. I took so many photos of viewpoints today that my phone was running low. One of my group had to conquer a decent fear of heights today, and she did a good job, no thanks to the other guy that looked over one of the viewpoints and exclaimed, "that's a fatal fall". Lol. Anyway, by 5pm when the basilica closed, we walked down to a main street and caught a taxi back home. We actually got a better rate back, perhaps because it was an older taxi. After reuniting with the group in the lobby and hanging out all together for a bit, we went to dinner for the last time as a group. We had subway sandwiches, then spent our last hour hanging out before the bus came and took the last of my companions away. I waved goodbye, then made my way back to the hotel. It was a weird feeling to be alone again after all this time, but i'll be leaving tomorrow so it will be fine. I watched some english movies into the night which was great since the internet was down until 10. Set my alarm for 10pm as a safety, but I do want to sleep in somewhat.
Another city view
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