This morning I'm up and working on the computer until about 10:00 a.m., at which time I took our laundry down the street to the lavandaria.
When I got back to the guest house, Linda and I started walking down to Parque Calvario, by way of the Vrisa Bookstore, where we returned a rental book Linda had checked out.
From there we walked to Parque Central and stopped in at Pollo Campero to get a soft-serve ice cream cone, however they weren't selling them yet. Instead, we walked around the area on the east side of Parque Calvario. We checked out the area on the east side of the Palacio Municipal (city hall) to see if there was a market going on, but it was locked up. We walked through the Commercial Mercado, a two-story, semi-open air building with a basement (actually it's street level on one side), but most businesses were closed. We walked to the front of the Palacio Municipal to see of the town band (two marimbas, a snare drum and a string bass) were playing, but they weren't.
We sat in Parque Central on a bench in the shade for about a half an hour and only had to say "no, gracias" about five times. From there, we walked over to the site of a restaurant that offers live marimba music (or so we read), but got confused by the street names. The site we wanted was in Zona 1, where we were, but the address I used, which worked, albeit incorrectly, was in Zona 3.
Frustrated, we went to Pollo Campero for lunch and further study of our maps and location information. After lunch, we walked to the correct location for the restaurant we were seeking. It was across the street from Dispensa Familiar, so we went into the grocery and picked up some items we needed.
We then walked home and dropped off our purchases. I went to pick up our laundry. Today's laundry, which included our bed sheets, sweats and most of our clothing and towels, cost only Q40 ($4.80). After taking the laundry back to the guest house, Linda put it away while I went to the mercado on the corner to pick up some fruit and vegetables we needed.
Back at the apartment, I sterilized the fruit and vegetables I had purchased with Sanavida and put them away. I tried to work on the computer, but our connection was so bad I shut it down and read a mystery we had purchased at one of the used book stores we had visited.
Around 5:00 p.m., it was so pleasant outside, that we decided to go for a walk before fixing supper. We walked from our guest house to Parque Calvario, from there almost to Parque Central and then returned to the guest house to prepare supper.
Not long after supper, the third young woman living in our guest house, Saskia, a native of the Netherlands, returned from a three-week trip to El Salvador. We introduced ourselves and soon she and Paula were chatting away in Dutch.
Later, I tried to work on-line, but got frustrated and decided to upload all my completed blog entries and worry about adding the photos to them later.
