Antigua, Guatemala
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008Yes, the name literally means old. I need to investigate when and why this town acquired the name, as it surely wasn’t always old. The little history I have doesn’t address the nomenclature. One thing everyone can agree on is that it is a beautiful colonial city. It’s had its UNESCO heritage designation for several decades so long ago it buried its power lines and has since evolved into an extremely cleaned-up version of a central American colonial city. It’s gorgeous, clean, has fabulous food and shopping and is generally an incredibly comfortable place. Many people I have met think it’s too touristy. Indeed there are many gringos but when you mix it into a 5 month central American trip, it’s a really nice ingredient.
I was dropped off in the parque central (7 hours from Copan) and made my way to “the yellow house” hostel up by iglesia merced. It’s a clean, quite place and my single room with shared bathroom was $10. The bathrooms are spotless and there is free purified water. The water is solar heated so hot showers are between 9am-2pm – not exactly in my ideal range so that was a down-side. The single room was SMALL (I could not fully extend my arms without touching both walls) but clean, with cable TV and nice décor….as much décor as will fit in a room that small ☺. I was only spending 2 nights there – enough time to understand the town better and figure out going to lago de atitlan. I also wanted to scope out some other places to stay since I’d be passing thru Antigua again.
I’ll have lots of time here later (semana santa) so won’t go into much detail now, but I did find an incredible little restaurant across from la iglesia de la merced. There is no sign out front but it’s run by hector and is next to an asian-fusian restaurant. It has a handful of tables and a beautiful atmosphere. I sat at the tiny bar which looks over the tiny kitchen. To say “kitchen” is a stretch since it’s basically a gas grill and stove where all food is cooked to order. The food is stunning!! Track it down. It’s worth it.
Peggy Rehm