Off to Quito!
After weeks of preparation, we finally head out to DIA to fly to Quito. Our flight did not leave until just after midnight on May 28th. We had a two-hour layover in Miami, then flew the final leg to Quito. Since we are staying for 6 weeks we had quite a bit of luggage with us. A whole duffle bag was just for Richard's mountaineering gear!
First Day in Quito
After we landed safely and our driver dropped us off in our Airbnb, we headed out to the park to find some food and get acquainted with our neighborhood. At this point, all four of us were pretty tired (you can tell by the dark circles under our eyes!), but we knew we had to burn energy if we had any hope of a good night's sleep. Since it was Sunday, a lot of restaurants were closed, but the park was hopping with vendors of all kinds. It was definitely the place for families to be. People were picnicking, playing soccer, and enjoying the playgrounds, rowboats, and other attractions around La Carolina.
While at the park, I asked one of the vendors what the most typical food was here in Quito because I had no idea what to order. She recommended ceviche de chochos fritada. The chochos are the white beans, which you can see under the fried pork skin. The ceviche also has pork, plantains, and cucumbers. David's favorite was the fried pork skin, I liked the plantain, Rick liked the pork and chochos, and Richard ate everything! We then got some dessert, huevos chilenos, which are fried balls of dough. You could put honey on top too, which David loved since that is one of his favorite foods!
We were pretty tired at this point and on the way back to our apartment we found a pizza place. So we ordered a pizza to go and took it home for dinner. We all crashed by 6:00PM and slept for 13 hours!
The next morning we were rested enough to fully organize our apartment, go for a full shop at the grocery store and just enjoy finding our way around the neighborhood. Below you can see a picture of my view as I type this blog post and a short video of what our place looks like! I will update again soon as we are sure to have some adventures this week as we learn our way around the city!
