I have arrived!

After 24 hours in Mexico City, I have arrived in Guatemala, the 4th country I have been to in my life.

I was fully prepared to find Guatemala City not as cool as Mexico City, but I have been pleasantly surprised. It is quite charming here. Whereas Mexico City has that "20 million people showed up at the same time and built a bunch of shit wherever they felt like it" feel, Guatemala City feels planned and intentional. And they did it well, too. It's cleaner and a bit sharper looking.  The weather here is warm and humid. It's glorious and I'm in heaven.

The airport is small and felt pretty empty. I was trying to find an atm but instead used  a service in which they charge my card and give me cash in the local currency. During the process the young man helping me said, "is this money from a salary, a scholarship or a gift?" I told him I didn't understand the question. He repeated it. I got so flustered that  I did one those, "how, why, what...?" He said our bank requires this information. Fine. Salary.

I had a leeeeeedle bit of trouble getting in to my Airbnb when I got there so I had to ditch most of my luggage in the entry way of the building and figure out where to find a wifi signal. I walked a few blocks until I reached a gas station and asked the attendant where I might find a restaurant. He told me that all of the restaurants in this neighborhood are closed for holy week but if I took a taxi to reforma in zone 10 I could find one. So I did. I wound up at a Mexican restaurant called Los Cebollines that was huge and beautiful but had not so great food. I got the info I needed and was able to get into my airbnb.

The area my airbnb is in is called Zone 4, it's considered the Brooklyn of Guatemala city because it's  hip and trendy, has lots of street art and coworking spaces. There is an old fashioned malt-shop style restaurant in the area called Pecos Bill. It's kind of like a Denny's. The food is crappy and overpriced but the atmosphere is charming so I have eaten there a couple times.

So far the only thing I don't like is that you have to haggle with the taxi drivers here; they don't have meters. They all want to charge me too much so I mostly take the bus.

What follows are pics of Parque España in zone 10, Pecos Bill, a restaurant called Grizzly Pizza that cracks me up, and some pics from my trip downtown yesterday. I'm having trouble getting pics to load from my iPad so hopefully there will be more tomorrow!












Comments

  1. UnknownApril 1, 2018 at 8:07 PM

    Beautiful. What's the Airbnb like?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. KBahrApril 1, 2018 at 8:56 PM

      It's a lovely studio apartment that you should be able to see with this link:
      https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/22742712?check_in=2018-03-30&check_out=2018-04-02&guests=1&adults=1&s=41&user_id=7746218&ref_device_id=a7cfefae6a143ec

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