Out On The Town

Yesterday Zoe took us on the bus to down town Riobamba to do some shopping. Our first stop was a shoe store where Zoe and Tania matched shoes to the patterns of children's feet drawn on pieces of paper. After they were finished we went down to the Saturday market on the Square.

The square was covered with about five rows of tents each filled with all kinds of hand crafted items. There were Alpaca blankets, woven belts, leather goods, jewelery, and much more. In several tents tailors used foot driven sewing machines to alter and fit jeans and other clothes. In others men and women decorated plain white hats by sewing patterns on their brims and festooning them with ribbons and feathers. It was most interesting to see the people of the town, many of the vendors were Quichua in their traditional dress. Tania and Zoe tried hard to explain to us the what things were...sometimes though there is just no American equivalent...like the lady selling cones of something between frosting, cotton candy, ice cream, and whipped cream.



After visiting the market and admiring and purchasing some of the wares we made our way to an earring / jewelry store. There were at least five booths just covered on all four sides with earrings, necklaces, and other jewelry. Some of the earrings were quite fascinating, made by weaving colored wire or thread through a loop to form intricate pictures of butterflies or flowers.

Our last shopping stop was the "mall" which is really just one store that sells clothing, dishes, luggage and the like, similar to what you might find in a J.C. Pennies or Sears on a small scale.





For lunch we went to a food court in the Center of Town, neither Zoe nor Tania had been there before so it was a new experience for all of us. We ended up getting food and drinks from a hamburger place, a more traditional rice and meat place, a chicken restaurant, and a fruit smoothie place. The food was all very good and we had a great time visiting.



A morning full of new and interesting experiences!