The two stars of the show are... Natia, the low-harm-avoidance traveller!...
... And Dave, the shocked-at-every-corner traveller (but fitting in with the rugged look).
And this is the fantastic museum palace that we stayed in (a High End Hostal called Sol De Quito, pretty great at $45 per night). This is the doorway of our room (Beautifully carved wood).
The room (I believe the best room in the house) had two floors!! Downstairs, you have the bed, a 2nd floor balcony, and lots of room!
Upstairs, you have a sitting "room" (Two chairs and a table), a writing desk, and a washroom (with hot water!!).
On the walls of the room, there was a series of Ecuadorian paintings in frames surrounded by Ecuadorian wallart (non-framed, as you can see here). Absolutely gorgeous!
This massive carving (5 feet wide!) is one of the pieces of art displayed throughout the hotel.
This painting at the end of a hallway sort of looks like you can enter the streets of Quito, right through it!
Here they have taken both a painting with accessories (wrought iron grids) to make a cool create of outdoor windows.
And I love the little blue birds painted along the wall.
Now here is my ultimate favourite piece of art in the hotel; a birdcage with birds flying out! What is especially cool is that the sky and clouds are inside the cage. Awe-inspiring!
Nice woodwork... sort of KamaSutra like.
Little stone carved figurines.
And no catholic spanish establishment is without a statue of the Virgin Mary.
Here is the restaurant, located in the hotel. The management team is just absolutely wonderful and really takes care of their guests.
This is Dave's "scrunched up eye looking into the sun" look... out of the rooftop of the Hostel. Funny thing... everyone in Quito likes to hang out on their roofs! It's actually lots of fun. Terraces too are often on the rooftops.
Here's another way to relax... a courtyard surrounded by greenery, and includes a BBQ!! Now, that's the way to live!
On our second day, on the way back from walking to a local bakery, we were invited by the mgmt team (a family) and one of the patrons (an Argentinean Engineer working on the local petroleum fields) to hang out with them and join them on their Labor Day. They shared their meat and we shared our bread... it was lots of fun!!
Here is the view from our room... mountains surround the city and make a wonderful landscape for walking around with no specific purpose.
Oh and frequently, we were woken up by dogs (and car alarms) in the morning. Funny thing in Quito, people like to keep their guard dogs on rooftops too... you can see in the picture above the German Sheppard barking at the person below.
Here's something we did not expect... TONS of american chains... Burger King, Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins, Cinnabon, Pizza Hut, Radioshack, ...