Three days left in La Paz, four days left in Bolivia, we manage to tear ourselves from our comfortable bedroom and make it to breakfast for a change. This doesn't improve anyones' mood as the breakfast hall is full of people all narky at the grumpy woman who runs breakfast. At 9.29am she puts away all the breakfast stuff. One of the other guests has to get the reception guy to come and get him something to eat. As if the bread / butter / jam / tea combination was really that worthwhile.
Sarah gets ready, I post a load of photos on my blog, out we go, have a decent coffee, wander over towards the sticker-swapping area but discover another artisan market (utterly lame) and, suddenly, the thumping of drums and honking of horns alerts us to some sort of cultural event. We ain't in Kansas any more (or Belfast, cultural wasteland that it is). Outside the Church of San Francisco is a Battle of the Brass Bands. Under the hot La Paz sky (which naturally burnt the hell out of me) we watched men in colourful suits play Caribbean tunes. Sarah snaps a bunch of photos and some older gentleman gives her a poster of Band Number Two, the Maya Por Siempre Brass Band. Gosh they were good, at least until Mayas Amanta Por Folklore got started. They had won a bunch of awards, toured the world, and now they were here, playing for free and making us feel like we were in a field in Fermanagh with Marc Anthony, not 4000m up in the Andes outside a Catholic church. A fun twist on Ulster culture.
An hour or so later and we have all our brass band / people watching out of our system. We wander across the bridge to the Sticker Swapping area and, sadly, have no joy whatsoever, holding no cards anyone wants at all. So we buy a few more packs, wander along Calle Comercio and end up in Pollo Cochabamba, wolfing down deep fried chicken and chips for lunch (again. Our diet has become a bit bland in La Paz, sadly), and get to our table in Cafe Torino only fifteen minutes into the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. There we spend the next few hours with gurny faces, pulling doubles from the wrappers, and hoping Atletic take their fingers out of their collective arses. They don't. So now I can look forward to Sevilla v Real Madrid in Cardiff in August. Oh my I am excited.
It's 5.45pm, cold, storms have been on and off for days now. We grab a few essentials from the little market stalls on the way home and are home for 6pm, arranging our stickers into numerical order for swapping on Sunday (got a few more doubles now), watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (in Spanish, again, this time all the way through), and the second half of Seabiscuit (could have lived without it to be honest) before snuggling under the blankets and watching The Godfather, in English, whilst Sarah picks out restaurants in Buenos Aires for our final nights in South America. Time is going very fast now.
Sarah gets ready, I post a load of photos on my blog, out we go, have a decent coffee, wander over towards the sticker-swapping area but discover another artisan market (utterly lame) and, suddenly, the thumping of drums and honking of horns alerts us to some sort of cultural event. We ain't in Kansas any more (or Belfast, cultural wasteland that it is). Outside the Church of San Francisco is a Battle of the Brass Bands. Under the hot La Paz sky (which naturally burnt the hell out of me) we watched men in colourful suits play Caribbean tunes. Sarah snaps a bunch of photos and some older gentleman gives her a poster of Band Number Two, the Maya Por Siempre Brass Band. Gosh they were good, at least until Mayas Amanta Por Folklore got started. They had won a bunch of awards, toured the world, and now they were here, playing for free and making us feel like we were in a field in Fermanagh with Marc Anthony, not 4000m up in the Andes outside a Catholic church. A fun twist on Ulster culture.
An hour or so later and we have all our brass band / people watching out of our system. We wander across the bridge to the Sticker Swapping area and, sadly, have no joy whatsoever, holding no cards anyone wants at all. So we buy a few more packs, wander along Calle Comercio and end up in Pollo Cochabamba, wolfing down deep fried chicken and chips for lunch (again. Our diet has become a bit bland in La Paz, sadly), and get to our table in Cafe Torino only fifteen minutes into the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. There we spend the next few hours with gurny faces, pulling doubles from the wrappers, and hoping Atletic take their fingers out of their collective arses. They don't. So now I can look forward to Sevilla v Real Madrid in Cardiff in August. Oh my I am excited.
Well it was never going to get tired, was it? :D
It's 5.45pm, cold, storms have been on and off for days now. We grab a few essentials from the little market stalls on the way home and are home for 6pm, arranging our stickers into numerical order for swapping on Sunday (got a few more doubles now), watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (in Spanish, again, this time all the way through), and the second half of Seabiscuit (could have lived without it to be honest) before snuggling under the blankets and watching The Godfather, in English, whilst Sarah picks out restaurants in Buenos Aires for our final nights in South America. Time is going very fast now.
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