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| Antigua sure knew what to do with their churches at night - most of them were beautifully lit up like this. |
Night lights
My favorite tree in Antigua
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| This tree resided in the ruins of a convent - I loved it so much that I made Mark take multiple pictures of it! |
Church Ruins
Many rebuilt churches in Antigua still had the ruins of the previous church behind the new one. Some sites were cheap to enter (I think it cost us around $0.50 to get into these ruins) and stunning to see.
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| You can barely see the moon in this shot. |
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| Some of the detail in the original stone carvings. |
Antigua snapshots
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| The Arch |
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| A typical Antigua street: multi-colored building facades with a volcano in the background. |
More pictures after the jump:
La Merced Church
La Merced Church is easily one of the more stunning cathedrals in Antigua because of its bright color. The details on the building facade blew me away – you can see the intricacies in the photo below. At night, the courtyards of the churches became a festival ground of sorts with plenty of food carts catering to hungry tourists and locals in town for Semana Santa.
San Francisco Church
This was one of the first churches we came upon on our inaugural exploration of Antigua. Since Antigua used to be the Spanish capital of Central America, you can’t walk a block without encountering a cathedral like this in some sort of state of ruin or repair. Most churches have been destroyed by earthquakes at some point since their original construction in the 1500s or somewhere thereabout. You can see on the right side how the church has been damaged.
Central America: Leg 2
After two days in Flores, we took an eight-hour overnight bus to Antigua, Guatemala. These kinds of buses should be treated the same as airplanes – bring a jacket because it’s going to get COLD. At first this was a blessing: AC in the jungle? I’ll take it! But after a while, my knees turned to ice cubes. And then when I wasn’t freezing, I woke up sweating during rest/pit stops when the bus was turned off and the temperature rose to match outside. My body couldn't figure out how to regulate itself!
When we did get to Antigua around 8 in the morning, we were dropped off at a park in the middle of town. This also became a familiar routine: arrive at your destination, pull out the guidebook and figure out where you'll find a hotel (or just walk a block - hotels are literally on every corner).
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| The upstairs courtyard in the hotel where we stayed, Hotel Dionisio. |
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