Adventures in Antigua

We got to our appartment late on Thursday night.  Friday morning we got up, talked to Denise (The wonderful woman who keeps an eye on us and helps us with everything we need).  She took us to the bank, then we sat down and talked about the weekend trips we wanted to take while in Guatemala.  Once we made a list and looked at our available weekends, we realized we had to get going on our first trip if we were going to get it all in!  So by noon our backpacks were packed and we were on a bus heading for the town of Antigua!  It was kind of nuts!

Antigua is a beautiful town in Guatemala known for the ruins, and a very popular place for tourists to visit.  I was amazed at how many tourists were all over the place!  I didn´t feel out of place at all! 

This is the famous yellow arch in Antigua.  I would love to tell you why it is famous, but I honestly have no idea.  But everyone seems to know about it!

We went to the coolest church ruins in Antigua.  This church was destroyed three times by earthquakes in the 1700´s.  They rebuilt the first two times, and then gave up after it was destroyed a third time and moved the church to a different city.  It is now a very, very cool place to visit!

After wandering around town for a while and enjoying all the really cool ruins we headed towards the edge of town to climb up to a cross at the top of a hill that looks over the city. On our way there we saw this basketball game taking place and I was totally intruiged!  Notice the ruins in the background - so cool!

The climb up the hill was really nice!  It was BEAUTIFUL and green, and even though the humidity was enough to smother you, it was a nice climb up the paved & winding path.  

As we got to the top we started to notice TONS of security and we were kind of confused.  Turns out the US Futsol team was in town for a tournament, and they were at the cross at the same time we were (random!)!  They were super nice!  I asked a group of them if we could take our picture with them (just for you, Ash!) and they got the ENTIRE team together for us.  It was so great!  I might be Futsol´s newest fan! 

After we enjoyed the view we headed off to enjoy the scenery ;-) The town is GORGEOUS!

Can you see all the volcano´s in the background? I didn´t realize there were so many in Guatemala! They are everywhere, and really cool! 

We wandered around the town square for a while and enjoyed all the music before heading off for our hostel.    For our first venture out into the country, it was a glorious day!