Above Old Town Quito

We took our friend Leza out to dinner for her birthday at Cafe Mosaico,
high above El Centro Historico, and had an awesome view!

Mitad del Mundo

Our friend Leza is in town and we've waited until she got
here to do some of the more touristy things in Quito. Today,
we visited Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the Earth). It's one of
the few places in Ecuador (which literally means Equator in
Spanish) that you can visit the Equator and not be in the
middle of a jungle.

This is the view from the top of the monument at Mitad del
Mundo. It's very touristy and with the advent of GPS, it was
determined about 10 years ago that the monument is actually
off by about 240 meters!


Lynn posing at the monument. It's still fun to have your photo
snapped here even though it's in the wrong place.


Our friend Leza had a good time and later posed in front of the
monument wearing a shirt from her alma mater, The University
of Denver.


The correct equatorial line lies at a nearby park called the Museo
de Sitio Intinan. With correct GPS measurement, it really does lie
at Latitude 00:00:00.


Now that both of us have been to the Geographic South Pole and
on the Geographic Equator, we only have the North Pole left for
the hat trick!


This is right after Lynn successfully balanced an egg on it's end
on the Equator. There were some kind of hokey, but fun experiments
that we participated in, including making water go down a drain three
different ways. Overall we enjoyed the Museo with the correct
measurement more than the Mitad del Mundo park.

Maurice Lennel Cookies

A childhood memory of mine is Maurice Lenell Cookies. They
were (are) those kind of cookies that look good on a plate
but never quite taste as good as they look. Kind of like
the cookies with odd jelly centers that elderly aunts would
serve to the kids while the grownups would sit around and talk.
If we weren't having homemade cookies, we were more of a
Salerno Butter Cookie family, so if we had Maurice Lenell, it
was rare. Let's just say the packaging was more intriguing
than the cookies themselves. The packaging probably tasted
better too.


When I got to work today, Matt...one of the Load Planners, had
received a bucket of Maurice Lenell Cookies from his Mom in
North Carolina. I didn't even know that they were available
outside of Chicago!!! And what kind of bucket was it? One with
a Nativity Scene with the Three Wise Men riding camels. Our
friend Leza always sends us a Christmas card with walking camels
and 3 wise guys on it so I felt this bucket would be mine....oh yes,
it would be mine! So I negotiated with Matt (amazingly he looked
at me oddly and didn't even haggle!) and when the cookies are gone,
yes...the bucket will be in my hot little hands. OK...I'm even
creeping myself out here in a Gollum-esque kind of way. Regardless,
I'm going to enjoy the bucket...even if it once had old-lady
cookies in it.