Anita gets Churched

Sunday, February 15th, 2015 Cuenca
Since our room at the Casa San Rafael is right below the laundry room, we were glad when the dryer stopped hopping across the floor yesterday evening. At first we didn't realize that the laundry room was above us. We thought the distant, but still audible, rythmic thumping might be something else. However, we were suspicious of the speed and intensity and eventually figured out the mystery.
It wasn't really that loud and other than that, our hotel is very elegant. The other good thing is that the internet upload speed is much faster than we've had so far in Ecuador so we were able to add pictures to all of our Ecuador blog posts.

 Just outside our room on the second floor is this sitting area where I'm typing this now.

 The hotel dining room is also quite nice, despite the religious theme of all the art. Here, there is no buffet breakfast but rather we are served coffee, juice, yogurt with mixed fruits, scrambled eggs, cheese buns and croissants with marmelade. Very tasty. We've had many different juices in Ecuador including naranjilla, which looks like pineapple juice but tastes different. This morning's juice at our elegant breakfast was a very tasty, freshly blended, strawberry juice. Everywhere we go, a blender or juicer is being used every morning to prepare fresh juices. This is a real plus for travel in Ecuador.

 Straight down the street to the east from our hotel is another plaza with a couple of churches, one of which is the San Blas. Mass was on when we went to see it. I stayed for a few minutes but Anita remained until it was over while I relaxed outside in the sunshine. Since Roman Catholic Mass is basically the same the world over, it wasn't hard for Anita to follow it in Spanish. Offering the sign of peace was the same except for the little boy who was fascinated by the gringa at Mass. Anita really enjoyed this.

 From the church, we walked about 6 blocks south to the Rio Tomebamba. It was such a nice day that we walked in the park along the river for quite a ways. The park is well kept with lots of benches, shade trees and bike and pedestrian paths.

 The so-called "cliff houses" along the river are only one or two stories along the Calle Larga, the street to the north, but are 5 or 6 stories to the south facing the river. There are either roads that switchback up the hill or pedestrian steps.

This is another beautiful building not far from Parque Calderon. It's just because of circumstances of travel and accommodation that we're back in Cuenca for another 4 nights until Carnaval is over but we really don't mind.
We checked out restaurants around the Parque Calderon again this afternoon. Many are closed on Sunday. However, Don Colon's, where we ate on Anita's birthday, is open, so we'll go back there this evening.