Deluxe in Quito

18th July 2011

Wow. Stuffed again.

Our last three course meal was back in Santiago, our first night in South America. Today for lunch we went to Theatrum, a fine restaurant attached to the main theatre in old colonial Quito. I had some lovely grilled octopus tentacles and then some nicely grilled grouper to follow. Since we’re in Ecuador, it also felt important to try their chocolate dessert tasting plate afterwards. It was all very good, though it wouldn’t stand up against a good restaurant back home. Then again it was also half the price.

We’ve enjoyed some great meals over the year, but not that often. I’ve read other blogs and overheard other travellers complaining that they’ll need to go on a diet and sign up at a gym as soon as they return home, because they’ve eaten so much food and had so little exercise while travelling that they’ve blown up like balloons. I guess by contrast we’ve been sensible. We haven’t eaten a thing this evening following that lunch. On our Galapagos boat the food was an excellent buffet every breakfast, lunch and dinner (with snacks mid-morning and mid-afternoon) but I always took a small portion for each meal. Much of the time touring around South Africa and Australasia by car we would have a decent breakfast, skip lunch entirely and then just have a main course dinner.

It helps that many parts of the world are rubbish at desserts. ; )

As well as a deluxe lunch, we’ve also landed in a deluxe hotel for our days in Quito. There was no chance we were going to stay in the place GAP had booked for the nights before and after our Galapagos trip. Hotel Quito is one of those utterly charmless expensive modern hotels that makes you feel like you could be waking up in any major city in the world. I can see why tour companies like them: it may be dull as dishwater, but even the pickiest tourist couldn’t complain about the facilities and I’m sure they never lose a booking or have an unexpected absence of hot water. But I hate staying for more than a night.

So we’ve ended up at Casa San Marcos, which is an old colonial house stuffed with antiques and works of contemporary art, apparently owned by an extremely rich Ecuadorean lady who has been travelling and collecting all her life. Our room is gorgeous and I bagged it at half price because I was booking on the day and they’d have it empty otherwise. It’s still expensive, but veeeery nice.

Hey, we are on our last week after all.

Related Images:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2011 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Ecuador. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.