The Market and The Park

In Which, We Go Shopping and Take a Walk

This is just going to be a short post today, but I wanted to show you guys a couple of the places we go shopping pretty regularly. Generally, we'll go about once a week to downtown Ambato (El Centro) to hit up our chicken and meat vendors. 

Puro Pollo is where we get our chicken, and when I say it's the best chicken I've ever tasted, as a full-fledged Southern gal whose diet consists of chicken, chicken and more chicken, you can take that to the bank. Seriously. They fry it a little differently here (not so much breading) but even still, it's amazingly flavorful and moist and tasty. 

Carnessa is where we like to get our ground beef and, occasionally, some chuleta de cerdo (literally, cutlet of pork). John likes the chuleta we've gotten at some of the little restaurants for breakfast, so we keep experimenting with spices and sauces and such to see if we can get the same result. 

This is one of the entrances to the Mercado Central. Downstairs is all veggies, fruits, breads and almost every type of meat you can imagine. It's huge inside, taking up practically a whole block. Upstairs is their 'Patio de Comidas' or Food Court, where you can get llapingachos, an AMAZING Ambato specialty. The best I can describe it is a fried potato ball with bits of chorizo, topped with a fried egg. Doesn't sound like much but they are incredible and if you come visit us, you will definitely be eating some. 

I didn't get any pictures today, but they hang a lot of their meat out in the open air. There's very little refrigeration going on while they're selling it. It's kind of gross but cool too. You see every cut of meat and every piece of the animal. Seriously, we walked past what looked like giant pig legs, with the hoof still attached. Not sure what they use it for and I'm pretty sure I don't want to know (in case I eat it in the future) but it's still pretty cool to see the entire animal being used. 

These next few pictures are of the outside of our apartment and the park we take Jethro to every day. It's just around the block from us, so it's an easy walk, and there's plenty of space for him to basically run free for however long we end up staying.

This is the front of our building. We're on the third floor, which you can't see too well from this angle, but we've got a balcony area with an amazing view of the city. The little gated area on the second level is the terrace (or, terraza) and that's where we hang our clothes (air drying, yo) and that's where Jethro stays when it's sunny out. He likes to watch (and whine about) a cat that's across the street. 

There are 2 other families in this building. The people on the first floor have the garage on the left, which also backs up into the second half of their apartment. The first half, with the main living areas and kitchen, is directly under our apartment on the first level. We saw the entire building when we first looked at the building and it is NICE. Like, North American-standards nice. 

Juan and Andrea live on the second floor, and they've got a lovely little apartment that's roughly the same size as ours. They have a bit more living space, but we have a balcony, so it's a fair trade.

A bit of graffiti, but still a nice park

Parque La Cantera is where we go every day. Like I said, it's quite large, with a lot of fun things for kids as well as plenty of space for Jethro. There's actually a skatepark there as well, and we'll see skateboarders as well as a few kids on bikes practicing different tricks. 

The bowls for the skaters. Grey and cloudy today, and quite cold, but we still have to go to the park!

Continuing on, the park ends at this little valley, which goes down to concrete soccer courts. We see people out here every day. There's a school on the far side that uses it for recess and PE, and there are several high schools in the area that will come a few times a week for the same thing. We also see local soccer games on the weekends, REALLY late at night. I think we saw one this last weekend that was happening at 12:30 am?! And there were people watching and everything. They were enjoying themselves though, so who am I to judge? ;)

Also, this picture doesn't do justice to how steep these hills are. Jethro will be coming at a dead run from the bottom, and by the time he gets to the top, it's almost like he's barely moving. These guys are STEEP...so I want him to run up and down as much as possible. Nothing like a tired hound dog.

Space for soccer games and PE!

Speaking of the hound dog, here he is! I honestly believe he's going to severely dislike us when we bring him home. He's still spoiled here, but he gets waaaaaaaay more time with us and he gets a lot of freedom to explore. 

Overlooking his new domain

Anyway, that's today! Tomorrow I get to go help out Beth and Jill with baking sweets for this upcoming expo they're doing for the bakery. I'm REALLY looking forward to taste-testing ;)