Colonial Quito

Quito has 2 main areas which tourists visit, the new town and the old town. The old town is also called Colonial Quito. The new town (an area called Mariscal Sucre) is also known as Gringolandia, roughly translated as ´foreigner land´. I went to Colonial Quito on Wednesday, here´s a photo I took of one of the main streets in the old town. You can see the Virgin at the back.

This is the Plaza Grande. It´s a big square in the middle of the city. The buildings surround the Plaza are the President´s house (like the White House, but Ecuadorian), a church, and parliament (I think...).
Quito has heaps of churches, museums and parks, which I didn´t expect. Here´s one of the churches I visited, it´s called Church of La Merced. It´s quite old, and everything inside is wooden. Apologies for the bad quality and the shakiness. I don´t think you´re allowed to take photos inside churches, thus I was trying to be inconspicuous and didn´t really have time to check it. I thought this church had a really strange feel to it, it´s not a really spectacular church; it seems like it´s trying to give off the feeling of grandeur but not quite succeding. Perhaps it´s the pink and white walls, the coarse, unpolished wooden floorboards and the rough wood carvings.

I also walked to a gothic church (the Basilica del Voto Nacional). I really liked the gothic architecture; the church was built with stone, there are lots of large stained glass windows and I think the floor is marble. It looked pretty cool, and I was trying to take a photo of it outside, but got told off by a cleaning lady! She said that I wasn´t allowed to take photos of the church, but when I asked my spanish teacher (because I thought that was really strange), she said that you can take all the photos you want outside the church, but just not inside. Which makes sense. So pft, cleaning lady!

Anyway, what was really frustrating was that I wanted to climb up to the top of the church (you get awesome views of the city), and it costs $2. Which is not a problem, but I only had a $20 note, and the people selling the tickets refused to give me change, and they weren´t at all helpful when I asked them where I can get change. So I ended up walking around town for an hour trying to find somewhere to change my money! I eventually found a supermarket, where I bought some biscuits and a lime (the lime was $0.04!). But after I had changed my money, I didn´t really have time to go back to the Basilica. It was ridiculous. Now I´m really paranoid about notes of big denominations. Apparently, $10 is already pushing it for change because things here are in such small numbers. I think I need to carry $1 notes all the time, it is so annoying!! Anyway, I went to Govindas that day, and felt a little better afterwards.

I was going to go back to the city to visit the Basilica yesterday, but I got sick, so it´ll have to wait until some time next week, there will be more photos then! It was really odd, I blame the glandular fever. I woke up with a slight fever and a really bad sorethroat, and felt really dizzy and lethargic. So I slept for most of the morning, and then went out to buy ginger. In the market, the lady gave me a whole heap (about 2 handfuls) of ginger, she wouldn´t give me any less, which was really annoying! It only cost $1, but seriously, what am I going to do with so much ginger?! I´ll be eating it for 3 weeks! Anyway, I went home and cooked rice porridge with ginger, and Virginia made me ginger tea, which is essentially ginger boiled in water, with sugar or honey. It was really nice. I felt infinitely better after my meal. My sorethroat went away after I ate the porridge, yay! By dinner, I could eat normal food again. I´ve still got a runny nose though, which is really annoying, but at least I don´t feel like sleeping all day. It´s funny, everyone kept offering me medication. I had to keep refusing them and explain that I don´t like medication, and besides, I wasn´t THAT sick.

Oh, one thing I have to say, Quito has bad air pollution problems. Most of the cars here are quite old, so the exhaust is really dirty. The buses and trucks emit thick, black fumes. In the city, it´s especially bad. When I was walkling to the Basilica, I was trying not to breathe too much (I already had a sorethroat, and didn´t want to make it worse), but because I was walking uphill and was slightly puffed, I had to take deeper breathes. So essentially, I was trying to breathe and not breathe at the same time. Needless to say, it didn´t work particularly well. I wonder how it will be in Mexico City, the most polluted city in the world (for air pollution).