Sunny day Quito

20th July 2011

Argh! How frustrating.

This morning the skies are beautifully clear and blue, and the old city of Quito shines with crisp light and shadow. Yesterday the sky was mainly overcast with the odd glimpse of blue, and the city was muted and leaden. But it was yesterday that we climbed the perilous and tiring climb up to the Virgin of Quito to see the wide vista of the city spread below us. The photos I took were rubbish. Today they would be brilliant. But no, we’re not climbing up there again.

What did we do instead? Well, we went to the recommended Museo Nacional but it wasn’t as good as the Casa del Albado yesterday; you’re not even allowed to take photographs inside. Oh, and we saw some more Galapagos wildlife today. There’s a huge gothic cathedral, the Basilica, which overlooks the old town from its edge, and it looks exactly like a pattern book for high gothic. But it was built in the 20th century, though why they didn’t try and (a) match it more to the colonial architecture of the city or (b) use a more modern style in keeping with the 20th century I don’t know. Anyway, the gargoyles around the roof are in the shape of Ecuadorean fauna, including armadillos and marine iguanas.

Can I ask you something? If you visited a beautiful church or other religious building that had clear signs banning photography but no apparent custodians to enforce it, would you take photographs anyway? I rather imagine that everyone I know of reading this blog would say “no”. But there’s clearly a whole different class of tourist out there, because I saw at least five individuals (not part of a group) taking plenty of flash photographs. I’m not religious, but I am respectful.

Related Images:

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 24th, 2011 at 9:43 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.