Quito- 7:54 PM

So we finally made it!

Compared to my travels in Southeast Asia last summer, the flights to get here didn't seem too bad.

The flight from SFO to Mexico City was pretty uneventful. There were a couple of crying kids, of course, but luckily none of them were behind me, thankfully. The sound didn't work on my headphones so I read on my Kindle.

We got in about an hour later than expected. After getting our bags and going through customs, we still had over 2 hours until our connecting flight, so we went upstairs to the food court. My 8 hours old Subway sandwich didn't seem appealing anymore. Most places were closed or closing and nothing looked that great so I stuck with my soggy sandwich.

We checked in and headed through security and on to our gate. We didn't board until about 12:30 AM and didn't leave until 1:00. I immediately tried to sleep but kept waking up to what I thought was the smell of cigarettes. I smelled it pretty much throughout the whole flight, which was disturbing.

About 30 mins. in to the flight, we were served "dinner"- chicken skewers and rice. At that point I was hungry, again, and a bit delirious so I ate it like it was the best thing I've ever had.

Afterwards, I tried to sleep but there was another whiny kid and a guy snoring ridiculously loud, who happened to be sitting by Mimi. I brought my ear plugs which helped me drown out the guy sawing logs.

When we landed, we were lucky to be toward the front and were some of the first people through customs. We found our driver waiting for us. We apologized for our flight being late but he didn't seem to mind waiting. We immediately got into our van and headed to our hotel.

It took about a hour to get there. The drive was very scenic. It is very green and mountainous. The buildings reminded me a lot of Mexico but seem to be in better shape.

We pulled up to our hotel which is right near a park. Our driver was nice enough to help us get into our room early- around 7:30 this morning... even though our check-in wasn't until 2:00!

We got to our room, checked out the amazing view, and decided that despite what the "rules" say about traveling, it was time to sleep! And that's what we did until about 2:00 when we decided to walk around the city.

We headed to the park first. There were a bunch of paintings set up for sake along the street. There were also a bunch if vendors selling jewelry, scarves, blankets and trinkets. Mimi bought a cute little llama and a ring. We both bought alpaca-blend scarves.

After taking our picture at the Quito sign and dodging a bunch of kids and hippies (that reminded me of the ones in Humboldt), we headed toward the plaza where there are a bunch of restaurants and where the World Cup game was shown at 11:00 AM (which we slept through!) on a big screen.

We took some pictures and I found a restaurant to grab a sandwich. I pissed off the cashier when I checked the receipt and decided I didn't want to be charged almost $3 extra for olives and mushrooms on my sandwich. After eating, Mimi and I headed back to the hotel. Mimi got a slice of pizza on the way and we made it back to the hotel about 5:30. We decided to relax a bit tonight because we need to meet our tour group at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

I'm looking forward to meeting our tour leader and our group of 31 tomorrow!