Walking to Breakfast - Part 1, Lots of Photos

Dear Family and Friends,

Because of Covid we are only able to drive our car on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and every other Sunday.  Monday night as we went to bed we decided to walk to one of our favorite restaurants for breakfast since Tuesday is a non driving day.

We woke up Tuesday to rain.  We decided to go with our plans anyway since it was only drizzling.  

Here is Chuck, just outside our condo gate, masked up and ready to walk.

We walked across the street to the river path. This is a picture of our condo from across the street.

This is the view across the river from our condo.  Not very many people washing clothes on the rocks this morning because of the rainy weather.

We are so fortunate to have a nice path to walk.  We share it with bicycles.

We have to get off the path to cross under Las Americas Avenue. 

There is a bicycle and foot path to safely go under the busy street above.

Here I am walking behind Chuck.  It is usually the other way around with him walking behind me.

Ahh.....Here we are side by side.  Our age is showing, (such a funny looking pair) but we are so grateful that we are able to get out and enjoy this walk.

After crossing under Ave. Americas we can see the colosseum across the river.

A beautiful walk on the way to the next main street to cross. This street is Unidad National or (United Nations in english).

After crossing Unidad National, we continue along the river.  The drizzle makes for moody photos.

Here is Chuck bringing up the rear.

Beautiful river view....just so wonderful to walk beside it and listen to it flowing.

This condo on the other side of the river is special because we have friends living there.  We do not get to see them because we are social distancing but we wave with our hearts every time we go by.  

On our side of the river, there are some interesting murals.  This one says "It's a wild life."  

We have passed this one many times.  I really like it.  These are paintings of the little molded soldiers that kids played with in the 1950's.  Little boys played army with them post WWII.  The two soldiers on the left are typical of the toys.  Notice the soldier on the right.  He is in a wheelchair.  He never appeared in the soldier toys.  He never became a toy, but he was a hero too. It is too bad because kids need to learn the whole truth about war.

Another cute picture.

Continuing on the path, looking across the river.

We cross our third major street and now the cars go up the hill to the center of the historic district while the walking path stays along the river.

We do not have to walk far along the path to realize how steep that hill is  Here are stairs going to the historic district and the center of town.

We love this part of the walk.  No traffic, just nice river views and historic buildings.

The house below is very famous in Cuenca.  The name of the house is Casa de los Arcos.  House of Arches.  It was built at the end of the 1800's, but fell into disrepair over the years.  Several years ago, the University of Cuenca purchased the home and with the help of artists has restored it to its former beauty.

The are many benches for relaxing along the section of the river.  

We come to a fork in the pathway.  Sometimes we take the high road, sometimes the low road.  

It really doesn't matter which one we take because in a short distance they come back together into one path.

Up a little grade to cross the final street before we get to our restaurant.

The street in front of us winds down from historic Cuenca.  After crossing this street, we are back on our path.  River on one side and historic buildings on the other.  

 

This old building has been restored and is now a bar and hamburger joint.

Not much further is the huge stone house.  If you look closely at the top left of the photo, you may be able to find some millstones that were used to construct this house.

There are many other buildings overlooking the river.  This part of town is known as the Barranco.

Another set of stairs that take you from the river path up to the original town of Cuenca.  There are two things I love about this staircase.  1. It has handrails and 2. At some time in the past a tree started growing on one of the landings.  Instead of pulling the tree up, cement was removed so that the tree would have room to grow.  

Finally, we arrive at our restaurant, el Cafe Museo.  The museum cafe.  It is up the hill a bit and overlooks the river.  Lots of covered 

outdoor dining.

There are a lot of fun things to see as you wind your way up the hill to the restaurant.

At the entrance you wait for someone to come and take your temperature and spray your hands. 

There was only one other table with diners.  We set at a safe distance from them.  As we got seated, the waiter disinfected our table.

Once we got seated, I checked my watch.  We have walked 7,034 steps so far and covered 3.4 miles.  Good on us!

Now is time for a nice hearty breakfast.  First some good coffee... a latte for me.

A delicious breakfast.  Steak and Eggs.  I think we paid $8.99 for each breakfast.  A little on the high side for Cuenca, but the food was awesome.

Our adventure is only half over, but I am going to save the rest of our trip for part 2.  I will post that tomorrow.  

Love,

Nancy & Chuck