Quito old town: Dd's Birthday

Today Dd turned seven years old. Elfie posted a note for him and he got to open up the two presents he chose, the Pikachu hat with floppy ears he saw in Salento and Megatron Transformers toy he saw in Popayan and tic tacs from yesterday.

gluten free bread yucca and pumpkin quinoa

ground gooseberries 

As he wished, we did not drive today. Instead we took a taxi to the old town of Quito. But first we played with the dogs by feeding bread to them from Andy.

Emily the Russian girl wandered in by herself and made herself at home and put on the Pikachu hat and played with it.

The traffic in Quito is pretty heavy. The town is very hilly and there are lots of cars and buses.

It's not a particularly attractive city but the Basilica is quite Gothic and nice. We stopped them and paid $16 for the four of us to climb the towers.

The views were great. We then walked through the old part of town to the town square and the Presidential palace. There were people walking around with large grocery bags of vegetables for $1. It made our $1 deals yesterday to be rip offs. Signs showed lunch for sale for $1.75. In contrast we walked into a chocolate cafe to have expensive snacks for $20. Ellie had a passion fruit mango ice cream, Dd had a chocolate cake, and Christine had a frozen chocolate drink with ganache with panela and syrup. No milk. 

We walked around and then took a taxi to a dumpling restaurant 20 minutes away for Dd's birthday meal. It had started to rain and we waited for an open table, which was a good sign. The dumplings were great with chives and home made skins. I had beef noodle soup and Christine had chives and scrambled eggs. It was only $20 including two sodas. 

There was another plate of potstickers that I didn't take a photo of.

We walked to a supermarket to buy some provisions for s'mores tonight per Dd's request. We were successful except for graham crackers but found some vanilla cookies to be a good substitute. 

We took an uber back to CoDa Vista that took 25 minutes in traffic for $6. We met up with some Germans in a VW from Finca Overland and the kids were delighted that the massive Scania truck pulled in with the Dutch family. We all hung outside playing with the dogs. The Dutch family had lost their Rottweiler a couple months ago and carried dog food to feed the stray dogs they found on the way. 

Christine made s'mores over the stove because it continued to be misty and rainy and the likelihood of making a fire was zero. We happily ate the leftovers from lunch for dinner.