Antigua

Antigua, the town everyone loves for it's European style beauty. Meh.
It was a very pretty town, but not for its colonial features, but rather for its multi-colored walls, gorgeous surrounding mountains and volcanoes, and beautifully maintained central park. Every town has it's central plaza - usually with a government building on one end, and a church on another. This one was no different, but there was always life, kids playing around, ladies selling usually relatively useless trinkets, and men sitting around chatting. It was slightly more challenging to find inexpensive food since this is such a touristic town - everything was geared towards the international patron - Chinese and Italian food of plenty but not much cheap Guatemalan food.

Being the original capital of Guatemala, it did have some amazing older buildings, mostly churches, from the 16th century - partially or mostly destroyed by earthquakes in the 17th century. Or something along those lines. Anywho - beautiful ruins of churches, with amazing carvings and massive pillars.

We walked up to a view point Cerro de la Cruz. I was winded and tired when we reached the top, which for me confirmed I wasn't doing a volcano hike with Jack. If I can barely breath after 20 minutes of stairs, there's no way I'm doing a 5 hour hike! How I changed my mind you asked? A cute girl at the hostel convinced me... Lol

Antigua seems like the town you go to when you've spent a long time travelling and you need a break from it all, and you sit and enjoy a nice latte or glass of wine. We haven't been traveling very long so this wasn't needed.Read more