We got up this morning and decided to skip breakfast and just have coffee instead as we were going to visit the Central Mercado on the way to old town today. We went to a little cafe down the street from our hotel and had cafe lattes but they were nothing to write home about and two coffees cost us the same as both our breakfasts that we had yesterday, crazy.
Whatever, the caffeine got us going a little and we headed back the same way as yesterday only today we walked through the park instead of around it. There are a number of beautiful parks here in Quito, all very lush and green and very well maintained. They are very family oriented with areas for the kids to play, and volley ball courts, and there always seems to be people playing boccie. People seem to take full of advantage of them too as there seem to be a large number of people in this park each time we've been around or through it.
We visited the Central Mercado hoping to get some lunch but we didn't have any luck when we found it. It was super busy with little stalls selling all kinds of things from fruits and vegetables to flowers, and they had one stall full of fresh herbs that smelled wonderful. As for the prepared food, it smelled good, and there were lots of people eating it, but most of their plates and bowls seemed to have some kind of animal in it. We couldn't find anywhere that was selling anything vegetarian so we decided that it would be a good idea to try somewhere else for lunch. We ended up eating at a really nice little vegetarian restaurant with an owner who spoke English better than me; he didn't even have an accent. The food was great, we had some kind of potato pattie that was orange but didn't taste like sweet potato but was good anyway. Everything tasted freshly prepared and the owner was very helpful and accommodating - he even had homemade hot sauce for Mike. We'll definitely be going back I think. All the people have been really nice here so far, we've even managed to have conversations with people who speak no English; between Mikes Spanish and some hand gestures we are managing to communicate ok.
After lunch we took a long, long walk in the opposite direction; if we keep this up we are both going to have very sexy legs by the time we leave. Mike needs to get a light jacket (the doughnut didn't bring one with him) so we headed to the mall. It was just like the malls in the States with some of the same stores even, but it didn't have what we were looking for. We walked back to the hotel along a bike route. It seems that on Sundays some of the streets here are closed off and everyone, or at least it seemed like a lot of people, get on their bikes and ride all over Quito - very cool.

Mike: No como carne. Soy Vegitariano.