Our Family Christmas gift this year is a trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos where we’ll bookend our Galapagos trip staying around the historical center of Ecuador, Quito.

We arrived uber late into Quito yesterday and didn’t get quite enough sleep to start the day – but we did anyways.

We woke up and had breakfast at our hotel – we are staying at Patio Andaluz just a couple blocks from the main plaza in the old town.

After breakfast, we walked around the Centro Historico town center – beautiful buildings, churches and squares — a lot to take in.

We walked to Mercado Central which is the main market for food and food stalls in Quito – the best option for traditional, local food. We tried a number of things including tortillas verde (made from green banana), corvina and ceviche mixed platter and fresh raspberry juice (all the fresh fruits and juices were available.

After walking around through late morning, we came back to the hotel briefly and decided we’d visit Mitad del Mundo which is a park dedicated to the 0 latitude location. The park involves a visit to traditional housing for groups of native people, a main square with shops and cafes surrounding a large monument to the center of the world city containing a musket and a beautiful lookout from the top. There were several groups of traditional dancers at the city square and we sat just off of this to have a late lunch and escape the only real rain of the day.

After visiting Mitad del Mundo, we came back to the center of the city to rest for a bit and then went out to dinner close by – to Vista Hermosa. Beautiful view and so so traditional food. Rawlings was very optimistic when his steak arrived but not quite as yummy as he’d hoped.