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So our hotel, Stannum Hotel, is the 12th floor in an office building, very funky. Staff are fantastic, extremely attentive and stop what they doing as soon as a guest approaches to face them and acknowledge them.
Walking tour of city today, first stop was San Pedro Prison (refer book 'Marching Powder'). The prison is painted pink, just outside is the school for the kids that live in there and stalls set up by wives selling the handicrafts made by husbands inside. Can no longer do tours of the prison as some terrible things happened to tourists a few years ago, and they also in process of closing the prison down and relocating the prisoners. Plan is to bulldoze it to the ground and build new government buildings.
From there we go through the fresh food market which is sprawled all over the street and traffic continues to wind it's way through. Then the witch's market (dried baby llama is not very appealing), you can get something for almost everything from these ladies, many strange looking things on their stalls.
Wander on down to the Catholic Church, Basilica of San Francisco. Very impressive. In the plaza in front the final day of Bolivia's Carnivale is happening, far more sedate than Rio.
Then over to government area, Bolivia has a very tumultuous past. Buildings left with bullet holes in them to remind the people of the struggles. A monument of a previous president who was thrown from the balcony and his body was hung from a lamp post, his monument is directly in front of the lamp post he was hung from, across the street of the presidential residence.
Now to the top floor of a 17 story building to admire view of city, which was fantastic. And the option of doing the 'urban rush' - harnessed and free fall 50 metres.....hmm no thank you.
Back to hotel and power outage, down the fire stairs to go for dinner which meant walk back up 12 flights - owner of hotel attended building and personally spoke to each guest to explain and apologise and comp that nights accom. Power come back at 4am.
Photo is view from our room.
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