A quiet day in the World's Highest City
I treated myself to breakfast out for once, going to the Cafe La Plata on the cental square and having their desayuno Americano, which translated to toast and jam, orange juice and huevos revueltos, a kind of scrambled egg with ham in it. After that, I prowled the local internet cafes to find one that would let me Skype home - unfortunately, the connection was so slow that I was speaking to my Dad with about a 10-second lag on the line, which isn't really conducive to conversation, so I headed back to the hostel and gave myself one of my occasional strimmings (I hadn't clippered my hair for about 2 weeks, which is quite a long time for me these days...). Then I headed into reception, and pleaded (successfully) for them to put the TV on on ESPN so that I could watch the England-Slovakia friendly game - I know, I'm travelling, I ought to have better things to do with my time than watching football, but it was an England game after all!
Feeling suitably gleeful after England's 4-0 triumph, I headed off for a late lunch, ending up at the execrably-named "La Torre de Pizza". The food wasn't bad, though, a quite pleasant dish of home-made gnocchi with Bolognese sauce. After this, I got myself onto the last tour for the day around La Casa Nacional de la Moneda, the old Mint. This is described in certain guidebooks as "one of the most important examples of Spanish colonial civic architecture" and is notable both for its size (covering a whole city block) and its intact 18th-Century metal mills, used for converting the silver into coin-thickness plates. The tour itself was in Spanish, which annoyingly started out relatively slow and comprehensible and seemed to get faster as the guide went on. There was a certain amount of information on posters in English, though, and the written Spanish stuff was easier to understand than our guide, so I managed to get most of what was happening.
After this, I wrote up a bit more of my journals, and then went into the Plaza, where there appeared to be an impromptu fiesta going on, with a marching brass band and its accompanying dancers making its way around the square to the steps of the Cathedral, many of said dancers in traditional dress, which is most noticeable for the Andean peoples by the women's baffling fondness for bowler hats - the rumour is that this came about in the late 19th Century, when British traders came to some of the tribes and offered their hats as part of the trade for the local weavings and the like. The men weren't impressed with this headgear, but the women were, and the bowler has now become effectively part of the tribal dress of these groups, usually in black, brown or dark green!
Dinner that evening was again at the La Casona pub, and consisted of a different spicy beef-based dish, whose name unfortunately escapes me, but it was again good. And again, they had live music there, though in this case a somewhat less elaborate set-up, with the group called Enharmonia consisting of a guy with an acoustic guitar and a girl singing. She did have a beautful voice, though, so the music was almost as spellbinding as the previous night's had been. I also had the chance to sample some of the local beer, Potosina - the landlady had been very apologetic the previous night that their stock wasn't refrigerated, but this time it was. However, one unexpected side-effect of brewing at these kinds of altitudes appears to be that the bottle is very prone to fizzing over when opened, and it continued fizzing for about half an hour after opening! Actually tastes quite good, though.
Feeling suitably gleeful after England's 4-0 triumph, I headed off for a late lunch, ending up at the execrably-named "La Torre de Pizza". The food wasn't bad, though, a quite pleasant dish of home-made gnocchi with Bolognese sauce. After this, I got myself onto the last tour for the day around La Casa Nacional de la Moneda, the old Mint. This is described in certain guidebooks as "one of the most important examples of Spanish colonial civic architecture" and is notable both for its size (covering a whole city block) and its intact 18th-Century metal mills, used for converting the silver into coin-thickness plates. The tour itself was in Spanish, which annoyingly started out relatively slow and comprehensible and seemed to get faster as the guide went on. There was a certain amount of information on posters in English, though, and the written Spanish stuff was easier to understand than our guide, so I managed to get most of what was happening.
After this, I wrote up a bit more of my journals, and then went into the Plaza, where there appeared to be an impromptu fiesta going on, with a marching brass band and its accompanying dancers making its way around the square to the steps of the Cathedral, many of said dancers in traditional dress, which is most noticeable for the Andean peoples by the women's baffling fondness for bowler hats - the rumour is that this came about in the late 19th Century, when British traders came to some of the tribes and offered their hats as part of the trade for the local weavings and the like. The men weren't impressed with this headgear, but the women were, and the bowler has now become effectively part of the tribal dress of these groups, usually in black, brown or dark green!
Dinner that evening was again at the La Casona pub, and consisted of a different spicy beef-based dish, whose name unfortunately escapes me, but it was again good. And again, they had live music there, though in this case a somewhat less elaborate set-up, with the group called Enharmonia consisting of a guy with an acoustic guitar and a girl singing. She did have a beautful voice, though, so the music was almost as spellbinding as the previous night's had been. I also had the chance to sample some of the local beer, Potosina - the landlady had been very apologetic the previous night that their stock wasn't refrigerated, but this time it was. However, one unexpected side-effect of brewing at these kinds of altitudes appears to be that the bottle is very prone to fizzing over when opened, and it continued fizzing for about half an hour after opening! Actually tastes quite good, though.
posted by Pat at 12:00 pm
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