Cuenca Tour Bus

Monday, February 9th, 2015 Cuenca
This morning we talked to a couple from Toronto at breakfast. They were here in Ecuador for 2 weeks vacation with the first week spent visiting expat friends in Puerto Lopez. We're going there in a couple of weeks so we got a hotel recommendation from them.
Later in the morning, we walked to Parque Calderon, checked the city tour bus times and then went into the "new" cathedral for a look.

The building is very big and quite attractive inside but once again, the paintings, sculptures and general interior finish seem somewhat gaudy and garish for our tastes.
For $5 each, we took the double-decker tour bus for a 1 hour and 40 minute tour around the city. The guide described lots of sites and eventually the highlight was a 20 minute stop at Turi, where we'd been the day before, for a view of the city.

 The inside of the tour bus is all wood.

Basically, in the previous few days we had walked to almost everywhere that we passed on the tour bus so it wasn't that interesting. However, it was a beautiful sunny day for a ride around town. It's important to be really careful when the sun is out. It's very intense.
Our hotel has a really beautiful parlour for all to enjoy.

 The rooms are all off of an interior balcony.

This afternoon we did some more research and booked hotels in Montanita and Puerto Lopez on the coast. In the last couple of days we've gone from almost no plan and no bookings to a plan and bookings that take us right through until February 26th, 2 1/2 weeks from now. This is almost unheard of for us but we know where we want to go so it will all work out.
For dinner we went back to the Molienda Cafe on Vasquez Street. We had beef-filled empanadas (Ecuadorian perogis) for an appetizer, then Patacon Pisao, a fried mushed plantain thing with cheese, salsa and guacamole toppings, and we shared a 600 ml beer. Altogether: $10. Can't beat it.