Day trip in Antiguaaaa! HELLO! Like I stated in my Comalapa blog post, I was given the opportunity to travel to Guatemala with a group of classmates! After spending about five days volunteering in a school in Comalapa, we ventured out on our last day as a vacation day in Guatemala in Antigua, which is about a two hour drive away from San Juan Comalapa. We left Comalapa at around 8AM in the morning and at 10AM, we arrived at Antigua! As our bus drove into Antigua, the streets became really bumpy as we were driving on cobble streets and so, our bus was wobbling all over the place! I thought it would only last like a few minutes, but I looked out the window and all of Antigua's streets are made of cobble! We were in for a bumpy ride LOL.
Our bus approached the hostel we were staying in for the night and we dropped off all our stuff into our rooms before heading out for a little tour around a few places in Antigua. We first left to see the church Iglesia de la Merced, which was a beautiful pale yellow on the outside with intricate white detailing scattered all over. We went inside to quietly and respectfully admire the interior of the church before heading out to an indoor market called Nim Pot'. Usually at markets, you are allowed to barter for the prices, but Nim Pot' had all their prices set, so you could not haggle (which means the prices would be more expensive than outer places).
We admired the view of Volcan de Agua within the arch and took some pictures. Here, our tour guide Bryna actually told us how Antigua used to be the capital city of Guatemala. However, due to the frequent earthquakes, the capital then moved to Guatemala City. The earthquakes caused Antigua to have a lot of ruins in the city and because of these old-looking, slightly crumbled buildings, they decided to preserve the old-town vibe by making all the roads of Antigua cobble stone. Following the arch, we ventured out to a jade museum to listen about the history of jade and walked around to look at their various jade products. The place we went to even offered free coffee, which I put way too much sugar in (but it's fine because girl can't take black coffee). That was our last stop of our little tour and so we walked back to our hostel. We were starving at this point, so we quickly scurried to a nearby restaurant recommended by the hostel manager. You can read more about the food I had here!
We then got some street fruit before walking to one of the markets toward southern Antigua and it was crowded with multiple stalls of clothing, shoes, toys, lingerie, ..anything! Here, I was able to finally get the pants I've been itching after, which have designs that will remind me of Guatemala when I'm back home! Later, we walked northwest-ish to a well-known view spot called Cerro de la Cruz. It has the view of all of Antigua and we got there just before sunset and stayed a while, which was beautiful! The way to the top was via a long path of stairs, which I have not climbed in a while... it was tough, but worth it. After walking down, which was oh so much easier than going up LOL, we walked back to the hostel to rest for an hour before heading out to dinner.
We then went back to the hostel because we had to be awake by 1:30AM the next day to leave at 2AM to Guatemala City for the airport.
That's the end of my Antigua adventures! Hope you get to visit there some day. :)
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