Cuenca At Last

Well, we made it to Cuenca on Wednesday afternoon, checked into the hotel (Casa Ordonez), went walking and immediately got turned around and got lost.  We tried to find the California Kitchen (a place a lot of bloggers had mentioned) and kept getting turned around.  When we finally found it, we found out that they close at 4:00pm on Wednesday.  No big deal...we just found another good restaurant to have dinner--Raymipampa's by the Parque Calderon. 

All winter as we were waiting to come to Ecuador, I had been reading the blogs and taking notes about the good restaurants that the other bloggers had mentioned.  And on the first day, I marked my map with some of those places.  So we are going to eat really well while we are here.

I also took some pics of the hotel where we are staying:

This house belonged to the owner's (Alberto) family for a very long time.  A few years ago, it became his and so he totally refurbished it a few years ago and opened a really nice hotel.  The breakfast that we had yesterday morning was fabulous.  Pat kept saying that it was the best breakfast that he has ever had.  It is also in a wonderful location and it is a great choice for us.

After breakfast, we took a walk down to the Rio Tomebamba (I think the spelling is correct) and took a few more pictures:

I even got Pat to pose for a picture, although he says that this picture looks like he could be anywhere, even in Gatlinburg, TN.  I will try to get him in more pictures as the trip goes on. 

We saw these little cuties who were walking along, either going to school or going on a field trip.  Brought back some memories of when my kids were in kindergarten and I was a chaperone.

Aren't they adorable?

Then we saw this wonderful looking building along the river and said "we would love to live in a place like that".  We later found out that it is a government building which is probably why it is so much nicer than most of the other buildings.

Pretty nice, huh?

This is a view of the city from the top of a lots of steps looking out over the river.  Beautiful, huh?

This is a picture of one of the buildings around the Parque Calderon Square that I took last night.

I will post more pictures another time of some of the other beautiful buildings around town.  The reason the time stamp on this posting is the middle of the night (for those that notice):   Well, I woke up at 2:30am and couldn't sleep, so I thought I would blog.  I tried to do this earlier in the evening, but I couldn't get a good internet connection.  So when I couldn't sleep (which is not unusual for me), I thought I would blog instead.  But now it is 4:23am and I am tired.  I think I will try to sleep now.  Hasta luego for now!!