A Day in the Old Town of Quito

The day after getting back from the jungle, Irene, Gabe, Rachel, and I took a tour of Quito's old city. It's very beautiful, and there are a lot of museums. When we were riding the bus, Gabe was pickpocketed, but luckily (and cleverly) he wasn't carrying much with him, and he only lost a dollar. We spent a lot of time shopping (there were two girls with us), and we went to a museum in the center of the old city. The museum had a lot of artifacts from the colonial period, and we discussed the legacy of imperialism.



The statue that looks over all of Quito:

Rachel and I both wanted to buy a USB thumb drive, so we went to some large store and asked the employees if they had any. They went into some back closet and found three. They were all 2 GB thumb drives; One was Kingston, and the other two were HP. The Kingston one didn't have a tag on it, so they spent 20 minutes on the computer trying to figure out what it cost. Then they told us that of the two HP drives, which were identical, one cost $30 and the other cost $15. I tried to explain to them that this didn't make any sense, but they wouldn't budge. So I took the one for $15 and left.
In the afternoon, the rest of the group all took a flight to Esmeraldas, the coast, to enjoy the beach for a few days. I couldn't go because I had to leave Ecuador in two days, so there would be no time for the beach. After they left, I found a great vegetarian restaurant in Quito and ordered this magnificent meal for $3:

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to pay with a $10. Nobody has change in Ecuador, or Peru for that matter. They sent one of the waiters to the bank to fetch change, and I was left waiting for 10 minutes until he got back.
Manuel picked me up and drove me back to the house.
I don't know why but Israel keeps popping up: