Antigua.

The giant church in the town center at the beginning of semana santa...

and a little confessional booth...


This is one of those must-sees in antigua, the arch, like the eiffel tower or the statue of liberty.


That same giant church...

my school! que bonita!
All of the trees are topiaried here. they all look like weird popsicles.

The fountain of the sirens - los sirenes


La merced - the coolest building in antigua. look at the maize curling up the pillars - guatemala is a mixure of catholic and mayan religion






This is a church outside of town, in a village whose name i cant remember



The band i heard in the park on the first day i was in town! and a fruit seller - guatemalan women can hold anything they want on their heads, im convinced.


Antigua. It is one of the most beautiful old cities that I have ever seen, with old world european feel and baroque architecture and art all over the place. How do you spell architecture, and why do we insist on including hard to spell words in our language?

Anyway, antigua is a protected place, i think at least. It is. A UNESCO world heritage sight. So a lot of the buildings have been kept nice and pretty so that the world will visit the city. Antigua is the most touristy city in Guatemala. There are white people everywhere, and you dont actually have to speak spanish at all. There are european coffee shops everywhere, and restaurants that cater to the gringos.

this is the wikipedia article on Antigua. I would type more about the history, but somebody else already did and my hands are getting sore..

I studied here for a week, living with a cute little old lady named Hilda. She cooked the oddest things - grean beans fried in a mushroom soup batter and covered in eggs, like a croquette. uh, what else? I cant remember.

What I do remember is a feeling of absolute safety - there were so many tourists here and they all spoke english...i was not out of my comfort zone at all here. So that was a bit of a let down for me, because I really want to travel to places where I dont feel comfortable, where it doesnt feel like I am just wandering through to take pictures. I dont know if that is possible here.

It was, however, really nice to be able to hang out with people who understand the world in a similar way to my understanding...very different from San Andres in that way...it was much less serious and a more enjoyable week altogether. In san andres, I felt a little like I was banging my head against a wall trying to understand - in Antigua, I learned to breathe again...
I went salsa dancing with my Korean roommate, drank beer with Canadians and argentinians and americans, climbed a minor hill with a Japanese woman, and went to the market and garden shop and town centre with my spanish teacher to learn vocab! She seriously rocked my business all over antigua. And then it was over -

Oh, here is something I wrote about Antigua that I think can sum it up...spoiler alert- dont read this if you dont want to hear something naughty...

antigua is a city of sex. Everything here has rounded curves like the body of some nubian princess and always the volcano spurting smoke looms in the south...this city is full of the smell of acid and the smell of decay - shit and vinegar. it doesnt fool me and i wont drink the water no matter how thirsty i feel. lotus blossoms bloom in the water here, in eernal sun and facades of romance and the temptation of the salsa.