Trying Something New

July 18, 2010

Hello everyone:
We are trying something new here. We've never done a blog before, but so many of your emails bounced back when we had all of the photos attached, that we thought we start communicating this way. Now, you can just look up the blog instead of downloading the email with all the pictures attached.Today was a beautiful day in Cuenca. The sun was shining brightly when we got up this morning and it stayed sunny all day. We took a walk over to Parque Calderon where people gather on Sunday mornings. We met up with a number of the expats we have already met here, and made new acquaintances with a few others. After the group started to break up, Gil & I went to lunch with new friends, Jerry & Rhonda. They have been here about ten months, and are a wealth of information for us. Turns out, they are living in the very building where we are currently working on purchasing a condo. So after lunch, we took the bus over to their place and spent the afternoon picking their brains. They are really nice people, and are about our ages (so a bit younger than many of the other expats we've met.)
Afterwards, Gil & I took the bus home. It was easy to do. We've got some exploring to do on using the buses, but looks like it won't be difficult once we have the system figured out. Bus rides are 25 cents.
We got off the bus before our stop so we could spend a little more time walking around El Centro. It was a perfect day!

By the way, once we get this blog thing figured out, we'll fancy it up a bit. Here are a few pictures from the day.
This is the old cathedral at Parque Calderon. The park/square has the old cathedral on one side, and directly across is the new cathedral. Here is the New Cathedral. It is the one with the blue domes that we've sent earlier. (I think I might have mislabeled it earlier.)


Here is the Hotel Inca Real where we had lunch with Jerry & Rhonda. It was lovely. Our table was inside this beautiful courtyard.


Finally, here is the view of Cuenca from Rhonda & Jerry's place.


Hope you are all well & happy!