ANOTHER GREAT SUNDAY

On Sunday Rich and Nancy, Chuck and Nancy and Jim and I took our usual walk from home to downtown for breakfast. I was disappointed to not see the jogging goat this week, but we did, once again, see the group of horses and riders coming out of the side street onto the Ave. de las Americas. This week, though, we did not see the parade. BUT, we did see a surprising thing for Cuenca - Ultralights in the sky. (Remember, we are at 8,000 feet here).

Along the way we saw more wonderful architectural features on buildings.


The rest of our walk was fairly uneventful (compared to last week) and we ended up at our breakfast destination - Hotel Crespo on Calle Larga - in a decent amount of time. This hotel is quite lovely inside. At the reception area is a huge tile mural by the local tile artist Fabian Alvarez.

This hotel has lots of other lovely artistic touches, such as this column treatment.

We were the only ones in the lovely dining room (with a great view).

They offer all kinds of different breakfasts here - Continental, American, Cuencan, etc. We were amused by this menu item for hash browns.

We didn't know then, but know now that everyone at the table gets a plate of fruit (really good - papaya, pineapple, melon, banana) and they put out two huge baskets of bready products. We didn't really need to order breakfast too, but we all did. Quite a groaning board.

The item in the foreground of the above photo was a pancake. This was sort of like corn bread in cake form, and served with "cane honey" (miel de cana) - sort of like molasses. None of us were able to finish our one pancake. This restaurant has the best hash browns in Cuenca.

More lovely touches in the dining room, which reminded Jim and me of the Paris Metro.

After all this food, we decided to walk to the Parque Calderone to see what was going on. Sundays are family days in the park and there is always some sort of entertainment, often indigenous dance groups.

On our way, we spotted this young man riding a horse with crates attached.

Yes, they were geese or maybe ducks. (If you click on the picture to enlarge you can see the webbed feet sticking out of the crate).

Once we got to the park, we spotted our Canadian friends Brian and Shelley, with their dog Fredi.

They were there with other Canadian friends, Brian and Holly, with their new puppy who may be named Doyle. They are waiting to see if he grows into that name. Here's Holly

And Brian (in back)

and a very photogenic Doyle

Doyle was endlessly amusing as he was interested in everything. Here are Rich and Nancy watching his antics.

Passersby were quite interested to know what breed of dog Doyle was. This handsome young man and his wife were walking their husky puppy and the two dogs played for quite awhile while the young couple struck up a conversation with Holly and Brian.

As always, people watching is best at Parque Calderone. I loved this woman's hair.

and, am always a sucker, as you know, for the photo op ponies.

We were treated to this hummingbird feeding on the fuschia right behind where we were sitting.


After awhile we spotted Bill and Loretta, with little Johnny, who also enjoyed Doyle. We spent a long time hanging around talking to each other

and playing with the dog.


He's an English Bull Terrier with attitude.

Me, Nancy and Nancy.

We finally were able to say goodbye to everyone and the 6 of us wandered off for coffee. We had a date for paella at Akelare at 3 pm and none of us were hungry. We managed to eat some of our paella, though we all agreed it wasn't the best we had had (it seemed old - the shellfish overcooked).

After all this eating, we rolled on home via taxi around 5 pm. Another grand day out with friends.

Audrey