Quito in 36 Hours

I'm not sure if it was the buildup, then the letdown, or if I'm comparing this to living in Mexico 15 years ago, but I can't seem to get into the groove here.  I'm not particularly having fun and I can't put my finger on why.

A big reason for this is that I got either altitude sickness or food poisoning on my only day in Quito, and lastnight I was up sick most of the night.  This surprised me because when I went to Cusco, Peru, where the elevation is 11,000 feet, I didn't get sick.  Quito is 9,300.  I took Diamox both times.  So what the...

Anyway, so my hotel in Quito was called the Hotel Villa Nancy.  It was about $27.  Here is a pic:

The Nancy was in the Guapolo district of Quito, high on a hill above downtown, far away from anything.  Except the coffee shop next door, called Miele.  They served a nice breakfast but I was surprised that the price was almost the same as the U.S.

But the funny thing was the mini-bar, which cracked me up.

So on my only day in Quito, for some reason I completely forgot about going to see the Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world.  It's latitude 0 and I think even longitude 0.  How could I have skipped that and instead, gone on a walking tour of Old Town?  

First of all it wasn't a good idea due to the ballet flats I tried to wear and which I found were impossible due to blisters after 10 minutes.  Secondly, it wasn't a good idea due to the impending altitude sickness which was at that very moment starting to hit me.  Third, I'd forgotten that I really don't like churches, which is mostly what I ended up seeing.  

The taxi driver proudly dropped me off at the Basilica del Voto Nacional.  He told me it's the  largest church in all of the world.

Note the gothic spire.  Very much like Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia.  Then I went walking to the neighborhood called La Ronda because it reminded me of Ronda, Spain, one of my favorite towns.  This La Ronda is a cute little neighborhood with multi-colored colonial homes, lots of art galleries, and restaurants (most of which were closed during the daytime).  I did find one cute little place called Los Geranios.  It had a beautiful little courtyard where I had some empanadas and a beer.  Then off to Museo de la Ciudad which was kind of lame, to be honest.  From outside the museum, if you look up, you can see La Virgen de Quito, supposedly the only virgen statue in the world with wings.

I had another taxi drop me off at La Mariscal, which is the neighborhood where all of the tourists go and where I didn't go because there are so many muggings at night there.  In the daytime, I felt fine.  But it was bar after bar and they were all empty.  It was boring and I didn't like it.  So I took a bus to find La Floresta, another more mellow area that supposedly had plenty of restaurants and hotels.  I got off the bus too far down and had to backtrack and couldn't find anything that wasn't too expensive so I limped to yet another taxi and went home, completely exhausted.  A little later I found a place nearby called Choris.  I had a side order of "chorizo" and kids french fries but it was still $8!  I thought this was Ecuador!  This is the reason I chose Ecuador over Spain was because it was so cheap.  Not so so far.   This makes me very mad.

So that's Quito in a very small nutshell.  Off to Olon at the beach.