Walking to Breakfast - Part 2. Lots more pictures

Dear Family and Friends ,

Walking to breakfast on Tuesday was our main objective.  We also had another objective.  Shop for peanuts.

So after breakfast we headed to the best store we know for such shopping, Arandano market.

We could have taken a taxi, but instead we took a couple of different buses to get back to our side of town.  

We walked back down to the river.

Next door to our restaurant is a beautiful old mansion.  Now days it is a museum and gift shop.  I love to imagine what it was like for the owners to live in such a fine home, right on the river.

Other houses as the walking path continues.  We did not continue on the path, we crossed the bridge to get to a bus stop.

I took this photo of the river as we crossed the bridge.

We waited at the bus stop on 12th of April Street.  

It is located directly across the street from a large park.  It is called Parque de Madre.  Park of the Mother in english.

Here is our #7 bus.  We took this bus to Feria Libre, Cuenca's largest market, so we could change to #13 bus to continue our journey.

It felt very comfortable riding the bus.  It was not crowded at all.  

When we stepped off the bus outside the market, I saw a very familiar sight.  A man with his goats.  When you go to the market it is quite common to see men walking 3 or more goats tied together with a rope.  The purpose is to provide fresh goat milk.  They carry paper cups with them and for 50 cents you get a cup of fresh squeezed goat milk.

I have tried it.  It is very good.

The little boy at the top of the picture is probably the man's son.

This is outside the market where we got off the #7 bus.

We did not go inside the market, but I will show you some of the items we saw outside the market.

This man was selling cute canvas shoes.  

I really liked them, he was selling them for only $5 a pair.  Unfortunately he only had shoes up to size 6 and I wear a size 7 to 7.5.  

This man is a street food vendor.  He seemed to be doing a good business.

We sampled his meat.  It was good.

He was selling this plate of food (pork, potatoes, cabbage salad and yellow rice) for $1.  

This lady was selling face masks.

We walked to the bus stop across the street to catch our next bus, the #13 bus.

We were happy that it was not crowded either.

We rode the bus past our normal stop all the way to the store to buy peanuts.  This is it, Arandano.

Inside is a store like no other.  

They have bags and bags of bulk food.  Take exactly the amount you need.  Below is some bulk spices.  I see bay leaves and not sure what else is in this picture.

Here are some dried vegetables, like carrots, peppers, etc.

Here we go, this is my section.  All of these bins are different types of nuts.

Here are bags of dried beans, lentils and more.

Bags of flour...wheat, corn, almond, quinua, you name it they have it.

Chuck checking in the freezer section.

He scored well on these good looking Maracuya.  54 cents a pound.  This fruit is known as passion fruit in the USA.  Oh my, it is good!!  Chuck uses it to make smoothies in the mornings.

Social distancing for the check out.

All done and ready to start walking home.

It is not a real long walk, just about 10 blocks, and all downhill going home.

Finally home, Chuck rings the guard to open the front gate for us.

Large ceramic mural on the front of our condo.

Our guard welcomes us back home.

Just a few steps....

and we are back in our condo.  Our mission accomplished for the day, breakfast and shopping.

Here is the total of steps taken so far, over 10,000 steps.  All total 4.8 miles.  Not bad for two old folks.   

Oh, and those peanuts I bought are now three jars of homemade peanut butter.  Two jars of chunky and one jar of smooth.

Thanks for joining us in this "day in the life of" journey.  

I have to get back into posting to this blog so my brain won't rot.  

We have a special trip planned next week.  I will share all about it when we return.  

Love,

Nancy and Chuck