Friday, February 11, 2011

Roaming.....


La Calvaria
Palace of the Captains General

El Arco (Arch) de Santa Catalina









So far in Guatemala we've been doing a variety of things: teaching and coaching at Common Hope, enjoying the people who work there, studying Spanish (4 horas), eating out a lot (alone and with new friends), figuring out food shopping, etc.  Another thing we've done a lot is ROAM.  Antigua is a great roaming city.  It's small and manageable, the streets have a Manhattan-esque numbering system of streets (calles) and avenues (avenidas) so it's difficult to get lost, and there are tons of out of the way things to discover.  Mainly there are churches.  In the 16th through 18th centuries, Antigua was the Spanish capitol of Central America, and the Spanish built lots of big stone buildings, especially churches.  After an unfortunate earthquake in the 1770's, the capitol was moved to Guatemala City and Antigua became a smaller, sleepier town with lovely ruins.  The buildings that have been restored are usually painted yellow and white.  The non-restored are just gray. 


 


La Merced






1 comment:

  1. You must must MUST go eat at Hector's if you haven't already. It's a small place right by La Merced. There's no sign on it, but ask around and surely someone will help you out!

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