Quito

I wanted to share some of the pictures from when we were in Quito when we first arrived here.  It was two days after the earthquake when I took these shots of this city.  Apparently there was no damage in the city of Quito itself but the small town where the quake hit was a different story. 

This day was a fairly clear one and we went into the old city area of town.  We toured the cathedral there and got some great shots of the area around us.  We are indebted to Rick and Rebekah navigated the bus and walking routes.  Without them, our day would have been far less successful or enjoyable.  Below is Doug with backpack under his jacket mimicking the hunchback of Notre Dame. 

We went inside the church and climbed upstairs to the loft.  This is the view when looking out from that spot.  This church reminded me of the many churches I toured while in Europe.  It is the largest neo-Gothic basilica in the New World.  A very impressive structure indeed.

Then we began to climb the stairs inside the church and when we looked out the window we saw the gargoyles which were mounted on the side of the exterior walls>  If you look closely you'll notice the native Ecuadorian birds coming out of each of the columns.  This is what makes the basilica so unique to Ecuador. 

As we climbed even higher we saw more and more of the city.  It was such a lovely view and yet this is just a very small section of the city--it's very spread out .  As you can tell, we're fairly high up in the steeple at this point.  Once we finally descended we walked in the interior of the roof to make our way to the other steeple as shown in the picture below.  It was fairly nerve-wrecking to climb so high up using the tiniest of stairs.  We were all glad when we took our pictures and headed back down.

It's now taking 15 minutes to download a single picture so I'll end here to continue later.  Blessings and thanks for reading, kim