Saturday lie in
Our first weekend of travelling we tried to sleep in but we are still not quite in the American time zone so by 7am we were already having breakfast!
In the morning we did a bit of washing and made a change to our hotel planned for return from the Galapagos. We had book a 4* hotel in Quito fairly near to our apartment but now we know the distance and time from the airport we decided it would be better to stay near the airport. A quick search on hotel.com found a suitable basic hotel near the airport that we booked for the night before and the night after our Galapagos trip. This will be much better as the flight to Galapagos is an early morning one so to stay near the airport the night before will be better. Also by staying at same hotel before and after a the trip we can leave one suitcase at the hotel.
We decide to walk to the nearby Basilica del Voto Nacional via the hotel we just cancelled. The walk was up very steep hill which reinforced our decision was correct. When we got to the top of the hill we realised we had walked too far and had to go down again. We reached the Basilica and stopped to admire the view, as we stood there I felt something wet on my head and back, a local man started pointing and said it was a pigeon and offered to help, another man also offered a tissue. Barrie immediately recognised this as a scam he had read about where local people attempt to help you and pick your pocket at the same time. He quickly moved us on with no hard done and nothing taken except for some green dirt on our clothes. We treated ourselves to a coffee before getting a taxi to the Botanical Gardens.
In the Botanical Gardens we were able to relax and enjoy the tranquility of the place and the beautiful flowers. We especially enjoyed the large collection of Bonsi trees.
Finding vegetarian food is not always simple so Linner (Lunch and Dinner) today was good old Pizza Hut.
