Trolley Tour

Dear Family and Friends,

Rich and Nancy invited me to join them and Lourdes for dinner at Tiestos on Wednesday night. Although I had read her blog, I had not had actually met Lourdes. She is a very delightful lady. You can read about her experiences here in Ecuador by clicking here.

Here are two very beautiful ladies....


We had a great time, ate and drank more than our share and almost closed the restaurant. I shared a taxi home with Rich and Nancy. We were saying how we were going to sleep in the next morning when Nancy remembered that we had reservations for a tour that begins in San Sebastian plaza at 8:30am.

We decided that we would wait and see how we felt in the morning to decide if we would take the tour or not.

After getting back home I crawled into bed around midnight. As I was falling to sleep, I thought that I would be sleeping too late to go on the tour. But..I woke up at my usual 6:30 am time and actually felt pretty good. I called Nancy and Rich and they said they were good to go so we went on our tour.

TOUR

For those of you who live here in Cuenca, you may have noticed a new sight seeing bus. It looks a little like a cable car trolley. The other day I dropped by the tourist office and asked about the smaller tour bus. The lady explained that it is different from the double deck tour. A four hour tour that is on Wednesdays - Saturdays. The tour is a walking and riding tour and covers some areas not covered with the double deck bus tour.

I talked with Nancy to see if she might be interested in joining me in this "research" tour. She said she would be like to and that Rich might even be interested. I made reservations for three.
I use the word "research" because we are always on the look out for fun things to do with our guests.


I would recommend making reservations if you are going to do this tour. Not because it is so crowded but just the opposite. The tour is so new and just getting started and the schedule could change. Nancy, Rich and I were the only customers. Actually, this turned out great for us as we all had a front row seat.


The tour included a nice mix of walking and riding. We toured places that we already knew about and we also saw places we had not been before. It was interesting to learn more about places we are familiar with.

The four hour tour costs $12.00 per person.

One thing the tour included that we had not done before was a tour of the Homero Ortega Panama hat factory. It was a very good tour because we saw all the steps in producing these hats. We actually toured the factory.


At the end of the tour we were escorted to the show room. Here is a picture of Rich and our tour guide, Henry posing in some hats.


After the tour we had a bite to eat and we went back home to take a nap because we had another celebration to attend last evening.

A group of us Gringos met last evening at Terrace restaurant. We got together to celebrate some recent birthdays. As always we really enjoyed the food. Everyone was in very good spirits as we had not actually been together, as I remember, since New Years Eve.

The best for me is that Chuck and Brad walked into the restaurant about 45 minutes after we arrived. They had returned from their jungle adventure.

Yes, Chuck is back home and life is good!!

Love,
Nancy

PS: Chuck is going through his pictures as I am posting. He said it may take a little while to get them categorized but that he will put up posts about his adventure before too long.