Dinner at the Welten Restaurant Ends the Vacation Nicely (and Deliciously)

The interior of the Welten Restaurant is best described as "eclectic"

Some youtube clip about things to do in Antigua recommended the Welten Restaurant. I don't normally do what youtube videos tell me to do, but I did. And I am so glad I did.

This is a fancy gourmet restaurant. But the atmosphere was great. Christmas lights and strands of living rattan falling from the ceiling. A live band (actually, just a keyboard player/singer and a man on tom-toms) playing Latin lounge jazz versions of Toto's "Africa," the Cuban classic "Guantanamera," "Oye Como Va," and even "Hotel California." What's not to love? 

And there was the pool filled with flower petals in the back. I ate in the front, the better to hear the band.

And the food? Beyond awesome.

The bread was a little extra, but it was so worth it if only for the butter.

Garlic and sweet bell peppers mixed into the butter. So good.

And for a starter, I had the cream of corn soup. I know, doesn't sound like much, but ...

This smelled more like fresh corn on the cob than fresh corn on the cob does. And the taste of the corn was sweet and strong.

The main course was chicken medallions in what was advertised as "California plum" sauce.

Actually, it was prune sauce. And it worked. And the chicken breast had flavor (unlike American chicken breasts). It was not dried out; it was moist. And the texture was melt-in-your-mouth. It didn't feel like chomping on a mouthful of rubberbands like American chicken breast meat.

I couldn't decide on an after-dinner drink or dessert. So I had both.

I ordered a Fernet Menta. a mint-flavored beverage. I ordered only a single, but the waiter poured a very healthy double.

The only thing that was not off-the-charts awesome was the dessert. This was supposed to be lemon ice cream.

It was good, but I am guessing it was a mild lime. The English language portion of the menu said "lemon," but I'm guessing if I had read the Spanish-language dessert menu, it would've used the word for lime,

And the after dinner tea was on the house.

I really felt happy here. It doesn't happen often enough for me, but occasionally I will be somewhere where I just feel so happy that I start smiling even without thinking about it. I only find this sort of "happy place" on rare occasions, maybe only five or six times in my life. This was that sort of "happy place" for me.

Prices were on an American level, not a Guatemala level. But for an excellent gourmet-quality meal with dessert and an after-dinner drink, the bill with a (heavy) tip was about $45. Well worth it.

Diners were scarce as we are still living in the COVID era of almost nonexistent tourism. I hope places like this are still around when (or if) travel booms again.

And the band played on.

The Volcano Does Not Fit Under the Arch

Looking down 5a Avenida at the volcano behind the arch

The volcano is so big and the arch is way too small.

The weather forecast said that today there was a 100 percent chance of rain. Surprisingly, in the morning, despite gloomy skies, there was no rain. So I decided to take one last chance at getting the signature photo of Antigua, Guatemala.

The above photo looks like the volcano is under the arch, but that's because the clouds are obscuring the top. The signature photo has this little bitty catenary curve of a volcano fitting wholly under the arch. I now will officially call shenanigans. Such photos exist only in the world of photoshop. I declare.

I had my morning coffee in the downtown and, by the time I finished my caffeinated beverage, the skies were looking like the 100 percent chance of rain was an understatement. Fortunately, the museums on my hotel grounds were open for business today, as they are open only on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Here are the historic ruins of hobby horses:

This is a stylized Christ, nailed to a "T":

Out on a limb and saying that was not part of the original ruined church religious art collection. The spiral of bells, however, would have worked in the old church.

Does it count as a carillon? I just don't know.

Side chapel off the main chapel:

I believe this Last Supper, with an appropriately Semitic-looking Christ, is original to the pre-ruined church.

Next stop: the crypt:

How many hotels have you stayed at that not only have bones underneath the structure, but bones you can visit?

I didn't take pictures of the bones because that struck me as simultaneously morbid and disrespectful. Even if I could handle one of those, I can't deal with both. So I photographed the Cavalry scene inside the crypt, which I believe also is original to the pre-ruined church on which this hotel was built.

We now have moved to the archaeology museum. Finally, somewhere in Guatemala, an archaeology museum was open. Those are Mayan artifacts above.

The pottery looks in way too good of shape to be authentic Mayan from 700 to 1500 years ago, but maybe it is. Who am I to judge?

Same with the drinking goblets.

The Mayans used those to drink their morning coffee.

No, I know, the Mayans did not drink coffee. Their empire might have survived up to the point of contact with the Spaniards if they had. Coffee, as we know, was brought to the new world by the Spanish, since it originally was from somewhere on either side of the Red Sea, probably Ethiopia, but I believe Yemen has tried to stake a claim, too.

More Mayan artifacts:

Let's zoom in on a few. This obviously is a bat. 

Mayans dug the bat.

This one looks like a pig:

It has to be a pig, but I was not aware that pigs were part of Mayan animal husbandry. In fact, I believe the meat sources in the Mayan diet primarily were deer and turkey, both of which were killed wild. So not sure why this one looks so pig-like.

I call this one "Mayan Guernica":

It is not Mayan. But it does have a Guernica vibe to it. But the Mayan Empire was finito by the time of Spanish contact. The Aztecs definitely suffered more of a Guernica moment than the Maya did.

And here is a photo of the volcano fitting neatly under the arch.

But that's a garden arch. It's not THE arch of Antigua.

Because, as I said, the volcano is so big and the arch is so small.

Another Day, Another Walk Through Antigua (This Time with a Guide)

The view of Antigua from atop Cerro de la Cruz

The main agenda for the Antigua portion of the Guatemala vacation is to have no agenda. This is the complete and total relaxation part of the vacation.

Rather than take some excursion out of town (which would have required getting up much earlier than I would have wanted), I hired a guide to do a walking tour of the city.

First stop: climb Cerro de la Cruz.

Cerro de la Cruz translates to "Hill of the Cross." "Cerro" means "hill." "Cruz," as you probably could figure out, means "cross." The cross might look a little fragile, but it was erected on this spot prior to the massive 1773 earthquake that otherwise destroyed the city.

You can take various means of transport to get up here, tuk-tuk por ejemplo, but why not walk? I need the exercise. And, besides, it was only 300 or so steps to get up here.

Next up: the one major church ruins of which I did not snap photos yesterday: Santuario San Francisco el Grande.

It's not very ruined. And it still functions as a church today.

There was a mass going on inside, but even if there wasn't, pictures are forbidden inside, even the non-flash kind.

This church is known for its shrine/museum dedicated to the Guatemalan saint, Hermano Pedro. (Full name: Hermano Pedro de San José Betancurt.) Saint Hermano Pedro was born in the Canary Islands of Spain, but spent much of his brief adult life in Antigua. He is the first Guatemalan saint.

He was canonized by Pope John Paul the Great in 2002. This is one of the many shrines to him on the grounds of the sanctuary.

This is an interesting structure:

It is a historic laundromat, Tanque La Unión. It was used as the main clothes-laundering facility in town during the colonial era. It still is used today for that purpose, mostly by indigenous woman and, mostly, at the crack of dawn.

It is set in a nice green park, too.

I should remember the name of this particular religious building, but there are so many in Antigua!

I can't keep them all straight, even with the aid of a professional guide showing me the city.

But this I can identify:

You can travel the world and still you see knock-offs of the awesome "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. I would've gone had been in serious need of haircut.

The next (and final) stop of the guided walking tour was the enormous, sprawling Central Market.

This is where to shop for local produce, fresh meats (can't pack those in my suitcase for the trip home), clothing and fabrics, shoes, whatever.

One thing that they had that shocked me -- shocked me to the core -- was this:

Among the bags of fruit that this woman was selling was the orange-colored fruit at, roughly, the two o'clock position if all her fruit were a clock. She had caju! The fruit of the cashew tree. I did not know that cashews grew outside of Brazil. The fruit certainly does not ship (although, thankfully, the nuts do). I've never actually eaten the caju fruit, but it is very commonly available in Brazil as the most delicious juice in the known universe.

When I said they had everything at the market, they even had a cart where a man was making homemade ceviche on the spot.

One of the available ingredients at this cevicheria? Bull testicle. Seriously, The old Rocky Mountain oysters. I passed.

It ended up that the only thing I bought at the market was a bottle of Gatorade. I was parched!

It soon was time for lunch. I decided to try the very popular local fastfood outlet, Pollo Campanero, the Guatemalan homegrown version of KFC. While I was inside the restaurant enjoying my "Buffalo" style chicken breast sandwich (the breast meat did not taste like rubber balls like in the USA), the skies opened up and it began pouring down rain. Hard.

This street dog took refuge inside the entrance to the Pollo Campanero. I eventually decided to walk back to the hotel in the downpour when it lightened up a little. Good call. Nine hours later, the rain still is coming down in buckets.

Santa Semana Museum: I Came to See the Carpets

Carpets like this!

I have not been having much luck getting to see museums I wanted to see. Museums in Guatemala City? Closed. Museums in Flores? Couldn't be found, not sure if they actually existed anywhere outside of Google Maps. Museums in my hotel? Locked tight. But one small museum in Antigua I really wanted to see was open for business: the Santa Semana Museum.

"Santa Semana" translates to "Holy Week," the week beginning on Palm Sunday and ending with Easter. Holy Week is a huge deal in Antigua. It's one of the places in the world to spend your Holy Week if you're into traveling to places when that place is the place to be.

If you think that having a whole museum dedicated to a few days in the calendar is strange, remember that New Orleans has two Mardi Gras museums (which would be the opposite end of the Lenten season).

The museum is in a repurposed, slightly ruined convent.

It's only ruined in a few places. The museum make good use of the un-ruined portions of the building.

And then came the main event: Carpets!

Antigua's Holy Week is known for the lavish, colorful, intricate, handmade "carpets" that cover the streets of the town for Holy Week processions.

The carpets are not traditional fiber carpets, but are made from dyed sawdust and flowers. This one is dyed sawdust.

What is even more interesting is that these are laid down on the cobblestone streets of Antigua, with huge amount of sawdust being used as a base to level the very uneven cobblestone streets before the artisans begin work on the surface carpet.

Those are examples of the dyes used to color the sawdust.

The museum has a few of these "carpets," but to see them in person, laid out on the streets of Antigua during Holy Week, must be a spectacular sight.

When I walked into the museum, I did not even notice that these were the sawdust carpets along the walkway. They looked like woven mats.

After returning to the hotel when the skies open up, suppertime fell right when the rains lightened up.

I decided to try the Antigua Brewing Co., the brew pub in town, just to see what a Guatemala style brew pub was like. It looked like most any other brew up.

But the beers were a bit on the light side, which is generally true of any beer brewed to be drank in tropical heat. Below is the yellowest "red" beer I've ever drank.

There was live music, which was good when the gentleman below was singing. He was incredibly good.

I ordered a cheeseburger. The very interesting thing about this cheeseburger was the fries.

They somehow managed to embed chives into the french-fried potatoes. I have never had french fries that way before. I hope it is not the last time.