This morning we went out looking for a new adventure… in getting a haircut. See the separate blog entry from earlier today on that excitement.
After my hair fit on my head again, we went looking for another almuerzos restaurant (it seems we could go to a new one every day and not run out on this trip!). This time we tried Moliendo Cafe, which offers Columbian fare.
6-24 Honorato Vasquez y Hermano Miguel
The lunch included a vegetable soup, banana, tree-tomato juice, your choice of chicken, beef or vegetable as a main course, plus rice, salad, and a slice of fried yucca. All for $2.50.
This was Evelyn’s lunch with beef.
Our next stop was the Mercado 8 de Octobre, which is on Hermano Miguel y Lamar. I would never buy any meat or fish at any of these mercados, as it all sits out in the open air for hours, and my California gut probably doesn’t have the needed bacteria to cope with the spoilage that must certainly be there. However, the produce looked very good — better than the other mercado on Calle Larga where I had purchased last week’s food. We ended up buying a few fruits and veggies, because they looked too good to pass up.
We then returned to the apartment to rest for a couple hours and pick up art and photography supplies for a planned afternoon at Sofy’s Orchard. We had gone there 2 weeks ago for the Vampire’s Bite modelling show (see earlier blog post on that session), and had been told there would be some ballet dancers there today. We had invited our neighbors William and Ann (click their name to go to their blog) to join us both at Sofy’s and for a night of jazz later.
We met William and Ann that afternoon, only to find Sofy’s closed and locked with nobody in sight. At some point we may discover if we had misunderstood, or if they had cancelled. Either way, it had started raining, so we walked a block hugging the walls, until we ducked into Cafe Austria for a drink. Evelyn had a glass of the house red wine and I had a glass of the house white wine. We have discovered that wine is a pretty unpredictable thing here in Cuenca, but both glasses were quite good, and only $3.50 per glass.
After a glass of wine, the rain had stopped, so we walked down to our dinner restaurant — Nectar, at 10-42 Beniglo Malo y Lamar. This is a restaurant that is normally only open for breakfast and lunch. A few nights a week they rent it out to The Jazz Society for dinner and jazz.
I neglected to write down what we had for dinner, but it was quite good. Each of us had a full meal (rather than splitting a meal, which we tend to do back in Berkeley when we go out), and we shared a bottle of wine with Ann. We initially ordered a bottle of white wine, since Evelyn said she had tried it earlier. The wine proved way to sweet and and was not the same house wine as before. The owner graciously offered to change out the bottle (with 3 glasses already poured) for a bottle of red, which was far more pleasing. The cost for the two of us, including the wine came to $23 plus tip.
The Jazz Society is run by a husband-wife team. He plays the keyboard, and used to own a jazz club in New York, before starting to travel, upon which time he met his wife. She is from the Philippines, and now acts as the (excellent!) cook for the dinner meals.
Their guitarist is from Cuba, and they were joined by a very pleasant female vocalist that is here for six months before planning on returning to Nashville. Next Thursday they will also have an improvisational dancer join the show. We already have table reservations…
