Asunción Day 3

Asunción is not a large place. I thought it would be similar to Montevideo, but even Montevideo was bigger and had more going on.

We had a slow morning (but not as slow as yesterday), and then got up to go and see some of the city. Our first stop was Catedral Asuncion. It had a simple white facade our front. When we went in, there was a lot of green and white decoration, especially the ceiling and altar area. It certainly wasn't as grand as some cathedrals we've seen for the capital city, but upon reading some information, the site for the cathedral used to be susceptible to flooding and has had to be rebuilt several times.

On our way to Palacio de Lopez, we stopped at Plaza Constitution. This was a park with some neglected green areas and a neglected white obelisk type structure. Along the bottom were different dates of important events in the countries history. For example, the date it declared its independence and the date it signed the constitution.

We continued our walk to Palacio de Lopez. It was an obvious building once we came to it. The building is pink and has a nicely manicured courtyard our front. It has a balcony that extends across the entire second floor, so it's pretty long. There were a fair amount of guards and police around, which made it uncomfortable to linger and take pictures. We also couldn't go into the courtyard.

Next we went to Manzana la Rivera. When I read about this, it sounded like a lovely street with colorful old houses. However, when we got there, we found an old, restored brown building with a small museum inside. Going in further, we saw a few more buildings in slight disrepair with some walls pink, a small wall of blue and one of orange. It certainly wasn't "9 colorful old houses". It was pretty underwhelming unfortunately.

We continued our walk back towards Palacio de Lopez. We read that you get a nice view from the river, so we went around the back, but the city as a backdrop wasn't the best. We also for told off by some guards for walking on the grass fo try and get a picture, so again, we didn't linger. We kept walking down the riverfront for about 20 minutes before turning around and popping our heads into the small tourist office near the river. The woman seemed excited to have visitors. She gave us a map, explained nearby sites (including Manzana de la Rivera), and took our age and country down in her visitor's log.

Avoiding the nearby favela, we skirted around towards the Cabildo. The old light pink building used to be the home of the legislative branch, until the branch outgrew the building. Now, it is a cultural center. We saw some small exhibitions about the history of immigration to Asunción and some of the presidents.

We walked back through Plaza Constitution towards Casa de la Independencia and Panteón de Los Héroes. The Casa de la Independencia was a reconstruction in the house where two brothers formed the coup for independence from Spain in 1811. It was a small place with some information and examples of what the rooms would have looked like in the early 1800s. I was surprised by the hammocks hanging in the house. It wasn't decorative and had lots of plain, dark wood. Our next stop a short couple blocks away was Panteón de Los Héroes. It was a grand building with a beautiful dome. There were two guards standing at the large doorway leading into what is a memorial area. There are different groups who gave their lives represented in the crypt below the dome. It reminded me of the unknown warrior grave in Westminster. There were also some statues of famous figures like the first dictator from 1811 (scary guy...cut off Paraguay to foreigners and wouldn't let anyone leave. Lots of other issues there too. Google José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia.)

Before our last stop we popped across the street from the Panteón to Quiero Fruta and shared an açai cup. It was an excellent pick me up on such a warm day after we'd been walking for a while. Our final location was Estación Ferrocarril. This was the only place we went into today that charged a fee and it was tiny (like £2 for both of us). It was a cool museum in the old train station of Asunción. This was the first train that ran in South America. It has some of the old train cars that you can go in and explore. They're very dark, with dark wood and brown seats. One of the nicer train cars had red chairs rather than padded brown benches. The different rooms of the station had memorabilia from the days when the train ran. There were some train car schematics, old typewriters, and old spare parts. We also saw some things like oil cans and tools too. It was a bit chaotic with all the things related to the trains and the station just kind of thrown about, but it was still pretty cool to see it all and walk through the first train station in South America.

After visiting the station, we picked up our laundry, made a quick stop at the grocery store for some dinner, and then went back to the hostel. We spent the rest of the evening looking at our itinerary for the next month or so and making some plans and reservations. Things are really beginning to take shape for our time in Brazil!Read more