After arriving yesterday in Quito, the capital city in Ecuador, we had our first full day ahead of us. We woke up and had breakfast right away, which were eggs and fruit (yummy). After our breakfast we walked a couple minutes to the Iglesia de San Fransisco, which is beautiful church right in the city. The first thing I noticed walking to the church was how cheerful and busy the city was. There were so many people walking around with their families, buying various things, and having a good time. We walked into the church and it was absolutely stunning. Ive never seen so much gold in my life. They were having mass as we walked through and made our way to the front and i’m not going to lie, we were getting so many looks from the people in there. After this, we took a guided tour of the church and learned about many different art pieces, and stories about the church. We saw the brewery and also went up to where the organ player was! Then, we went up to the top of the church and saw some crazy views of the city.
After this, we took a 30 minute nap break and then walked through the town and went into cool stores. We also got churros, which I recommend 100%. A couple of us went to this one store and bought Ecuador soccer jerseys. I had a funny encounter with a kid who was so shocked when I told him I am from the United States. After this, we went to the Basilica de Quito, which was also incredible. We got all the way to the top and had to climb these scary ladders. After this, we walked back to the hotel for some nice dinner.
The last thing we did today was go to the angel statue, which we had to Uber to. It was super cool and reminded me a bit of the Statue of Liberty. Around the statue was a park with food spots and also a llama! We played keep-it-up with some locals for a while, which was so much fun and then headed back to the hotel in our uber. Our driver was very chatty and we had a conversation with him for the whole ride back (in Spanish). Tomorrow I hope we have as much fun as we did today in Cayambe!