So I got my IHOP After All...

As it turns out, there are 2 airports in Guatemala City. We didn’t know this. Our bus driver did, but he neglected to confirm which airport we needed to get to by 5:30 this morning. So after he showed up 20 minutes late for the 4am appointment to pick us up, he looked at our ticket confirmation (which had our flight info on it) and then proceeded to take us to the wrong airport, unload our bags, and drive off. When we got inside, we waited in line to check in, and then were told that we needed to be at the other airport. By this time, it was about 5:45, for our 6:30 flight. So the nice attendant offered to call us a taxi. We went outside and waited. Within a few minutes, a taxi pulled up, but the driver said he had been booked for someone else, so he wouldn’t take us. Meanwhile, Jason and Erica (who were at the correct airport for their flight) helped us sort out that we could maybe switch flights to their plane, but then we got in touch with the bus driver’s company and told them they’d compensate us if we missed our flight. So then, after 15 minutes of waiting, the taxi driver, who had been sitting there the whole time, called back the person who had reserved the taxi to ask why she wasn’t outside yet. Yep, you guessed it: it was the nice airline person who had called the taxi for us. So we were standing there waiting next to our taxi that was waiting…

So we rushed into the taxi, said a quick goodbye to Jason and Erica, and asked the driver to take us to our proper airport “muy speedy”. He did, and we rushed in and raced up to the ticket counter. And, of course, by 6:20, when we arrived, they wouldn’t let us on our flight. So we had to book the next available flight, for 6:30 tonight. We decided we didn’t want to spend all day in the airport, so we hired a shuttle driver to take us on a city tour for the day.

First things first, though: here are some catch-up photos from yesterday:

Remember how I said I got to grind my own coffee?

 This is our cathedral guide, Sergio, up on a pulpit:

 They let us explore some catacombs under the cathedral - watch your head!

 And on the way back, I just had to have a photo with this dude. He was putting on his sweater and it got stuck halfway over his head, while he was waving the shotgun around... He straightened everything out for the picture though:

 Ok, so back to this morning. Here we are "sorting things out" at the airport, ridiculously early in the morning:

 City tour time! First we went to an underground market, and then walked around downtown for a while. There were some pretty cool relief designs on walls:

 Ooo la la!

We walked to "the White House" of Guatemala and tried to go in for a tour, but they don't open until 10. By this time it was about 8am. We kept walking:

 And then, because that was awesome, we walked some more and saw lots of really neat architechture, like the building ahead of us. Also, we saw about 4 billion shoe stores. Apparently, this is THE place to buy shoes. Our guide, Michael, tells us that there are about 7 million people in Guatemala City, and that it is the largest city in Central America. Michael makes a great inner-city guide because he grew up in the downtown area.

We saw some really cool metal sculptures downtown - here Sandy is "grabbing the bull by the horn"...

There was a Princess store, and Dr. Steele had to get a picture for La Princesa, Oreja, who is staying with Auntie Fran:

 Oh, and then we walked some more and saw another 4 billion shoe stores.

Eventually, we walked back to the "White House" and found a bunch of people doing TaiChi in the square in front of it. It still wasn't 10am yet, so we kept on walking:

Next, we went to a park where there were several marching bands practicing for a competition. The winner will get to march in our Rose Bowl. These kids are good!

We went around the corner and chowed on some fresh mango from a street vendor. Then we came back, and they were still really good!

One of the local beers in Guatemala is called Gallo. We tried to go inside this Gallo brewery for a tour, but they are closed today:

We headed to a Mayan museum next, and looked a bunch of artifacts that were dug from right under the museum. Then we climbed the hill that sits on top of one of the dig sites. It's kind of weird, but kind of cool that they left the pyramid covered in grass:

Here's another angle - that's the parking garage for a shopping mall behind us. After seeing the poverty in the rest of Guatemala, it was quite a change to see how well-off people were in the capitol. One of the gated communities we walked by had, not just high walls and razor wire, but electrified barbed wire running through the razor wire. Crazy!

That's the Mayan museum behind us. Can you see the "golden arches" off to the right?

This is an old aqueduct that runs through the city. It's not in use anymore, but nobody has taken it down:

Another place we visited was a giant topographical map of Guatemala in a park. The different cities are all labeled, and there are towers to climb up so that we could look out over the whole thing. Pretty neat concept:

View from the tower:

Then we stopped at, as Michael says, "the church that EVERYONE wants to get married in". I can see why - it's beautiful, and the grounds are lovely! You can't see any of the fountains in this picture:

Woofie and I had to stop and play at the Kids' Club House...

And, because we missed the IHOP on the way to the airport when we first started on our trip, and because I kind of guilt tripped people about that... here we are!

And the CinnaStack French toast is as good as ever!

Then Michael had to take us back to the airport, as there were people waiting for a shuttle ride to Antigua.

When we got back inside the airport, we found it full of National Guardsmen – yep, a bunch of American boys who had just been out building a medical clinic and repairing some schools are flying home today. We talked to them for a while, and then tried to get connected to the internet. Note that I said “tried”. I had a connection for a few minutes, but then as soon as I tried to pull up the blog page – Poof! So we talked to the guys some more:

And I kind of took a nap on the floor:

Okay, forget "kind of". 

And then I finally got the internet to work just in time to blog all this and it's almost time to board our flight. Stay classy, blog world!