Ship’s tour time! Sigh. But it is just an on your own transfer to Antigua so it doesn’t really count as a tour-tour (at least that’s our rationale). Oh, and we get a $50 per person credit toward any shore excursion, so this one only costs us $9 each – how can you go wrong with that? Also, because of the suite benefits, we can have Gian take us down to the tour from our suite meeting point, but not knowing how this all works, we’re trying it on our own this morning. Even though Gian keeps reinforcing that he doesn’t want us to have to be waiting “with all those other people!” He’s so cute.

So, we dutifully show up at the theater at the appointed time, but it turns out that you don’t have to go check in or get stickers here. When your tour is called, the Shore Ex guys tell you the bus numbers and you go out on your own. Hell, we can make this work easily! We lurk at the back of the theater entrance where we can still hear the Shore Ex announcements, but where we also have a clear shot at the exit stairs, and voila! When they call our tour we are down the stairs and out the door like a shot – if they do this for all the tours – we’ll be golden.

We know where we are going, so we hustle through the winding shopping kiosk area and make it to one of the first buses with good seats for 1 1/2 hour ride up into the mountains. Our “guide” is Joel, who is sweet and young and very personable. He gives us the spiel as we make our way out of the port and up the winding highway to Antigua, it used to be the capital of Guatemala 130 years ago, the town is laid out on a grid style around the main square, is famous for Spanish Baroque architecture, the country’s top producing exports are sugar cane, coffee and rum, yada yada. It is all very interesting, but the best part of the trip is the scenery – in particular the Fuego Volcano which happens to be erupting right outside our windows. Joel tells us there are only 3 active volcanoes in Guatemala, and we were lucky enough to see one of them!

Sweet. The rest of the trip isn’t quite as exciting, but that’s ok. The volcano was enough! We arrive at the same Jade Factory that we did 4 years ago, and are given the same cute worry dolls, and told to be back at 1:30 sharp for our bus ride back to the port. After a brief bathroom break, we head off into the streets this time with a more archaeological tour in mind. We don’t know how we missed this the first time here where we just wandered, got lost in the market and then had lunch, but there are a bunch of ruins here in Antigua, and we’re going to see as many as we can before our 1:30 deadline.

We start off with the Catedral de Santiago, which are ruins located behind the main Antigua Cathedral. The entrance is a little hard to find, tucked into the wall on the side street behind the main cathedral, but find it we do, and it is so worth the $3 admission fee. The first cathedral was built in 1545, but then demolished and rebuilt in 1680 in its current form. Damaged in the 1717 and 1755 earthquakes, the city rebuilt the cathedral each time. But apparently the destruction of the 1773 earthquake was too much, and when the icty moved to “new” Guatemala, they cathedral was never rebuilt. It’s massive (as the drawing of the original cathedral indicates) and makes for a wonderful 30 or 45 minutes of wandering through what is left of the 12+ chapels, the nave, and the crypts. You can tell how much we enjoyed it by the number of photos we took and posted below!

After a brief stop inside the active and restored main cathedral, we walk the few blocks up Avenue 2a for the next stop on our ruin tour: the Church and Convent of the Capuchinas Nuns. Once again, the convent was badly damaged in and thus abandoned after the 1773 earthquake. While in existence, however, the convent was widely used and quite full, as it was the first order that did not require women to pay a dowry to enter religious life. The nuns here ran a women’s hospital and an orphanage being moved to the new capital main city of Guatemala after the earthquake. Since then, the Diocese sold the building and it has been used for various purposes, such as a coffee drying “warehouse” and a dry cleaner. In the mid 1940’s it was repurchased, the main structure restored, and opened to the public. The ruins remain around the gardens, however, including the original “retirement tower,” a first of its kind round tower that housed the nuns in cells with their own toilet and study areas. It is considered the very first apartment in the Americas.

The ground floor contains different work rooms and the refectory, all opening onto a lovely porticoed walk that surrounds a pretty garden. Upstairs are all dormitories and cells for all levels of nuns (from novice on up) as well as a great balcony area that overlooks the what is left of the church (on our first visit here 4 years ago, and today, we could never figure out how to get into the church, or even if it was accessible, so this was our “ah ha” moment, when we realized it was permanently closed and only accessible through the convent). The church itself has been left fairly unrestored, and you can really see the earthquake damage here by the cracks in the walls, the missing stucco not to mention the wide open ceiling where the roof has been replaced with scaffolding to keep the building stable.

Climbing down from the church viewing platform, we follow the stairs down to the ground level and out into the garden area ruins. They are very well preserved, so much so you can pretty accurately feel what the “retirement tower” would be like in its existence. The area is beautiful even now (and the nuns could see the garden from a small hole in the wall (window) where they could also observe religious ceremonies. It all makes for a very interesting and lovely walk around in the brilliant sunshine.

That was an excellent little diversion and lesson in Spanish architecture and earthquake damage! We only wish we had more time to visit the other historic sites here in the city, but with our looming bus meeting time approaching, its time for food and libations. On that order, we head to the Antigua Brewing Company, passing through a great little arts and crafts market where we once again eschew any purchases (we have a long trip ahead of us and precious little room in our cases so we are restricting our buying to absolute can’t-pass-that-up purchases – of which we’ve not found any yet! We’re not even buying coffee…..which is torture….because we simply don’t have the room).

It is a little early when we arrive to the brewery, not quite noon yet, but they are definitely open, so we figure what the heck? We’re on an accelerated schedule anyway with our 1:30 departure time. The entry bar and vestibule opens up into this cool 2-story open air space with another little bar and a stage. A bunch of tables are reserved, but the bartender lets us sit at the end of the room and says we can stay during the “presentation.” It dawns on us that this is the ship tour – Colonial Antigua and craft beer, or something like that. It was wildly expensive for a walking tour and beer samples, and since we are here on our own, well, we think we got the better deal! Plus we can drink what we want – and we get the presentation too, for free. Bonus.

It is a great little place to hang out really. And actually, it isn’t that little. We are sitting the atmospheric open air bar with cool graffiti murals and exposed brick, but there is also, obviously a 2nd floor or rooftop garden area of some sort, because servers keep going up and down this spiral staircase at the end of the room and off the side is another whole huge indoor room. Who knew? Doesn’t matter, we’re very happy sitting here in our little corner, basking in the sunshine, listening to the brewer talk about their beer, showing off the tanks and system right there against the wall and sipping on, are you ready for this? Coffee stout! They knew I was coming!

On the way out we stop at the merch “corner” and pick up a great t-shirt for Ed, then it is on to lunch. We’re being really unadventurous today and going back to the same restaurant as when we were here last, but it was really good, it is on the way back to the meeting point, and well, what the heck? Why argue with success?

When we arrive at La Fonda de la Calle Real, it is fairly deserted. Again, it is super early for lunch. We have our pick of tables and end up against the wall looking out over the little courtyard and the open air kitchen. It is a great spot for people watching which we commence in earnest as the place starts to fill up. We order our drinks (they have good wine here!) and then our food. I know not to order the house specialty Pepian de Pollo, we did that last time and it was too much to share with our friend Kristine who was wandering with us that day. Ed ordered the Plato de Boquitos, which was a plate of mixed sausages including chorizo, adobado pork and longaniza (whatever that may be). I couldn’t decide between a regular pupusa, a pepian pupusa or the tamale (now that I’m a tamale fan), but the waitress said absolutely the pepian pupusa – so I went with that – which was an excellent decision. The pupusas were so good, nice and crispy on the outside, tender and gooey on the inside, and the sauce was on the side so I didn’t have to worry about drowning in spiciness. Ed’s sausages were excellent as well, and just the right size dish that would keep us full, but not stuffed on the ride back to the port.

On the way out, we stopped for a few moments to watch one of the cooks make the homemade tortillas on the flat top griddle, then made our way back down the main street, stopping in the chocolate museum for some samples (but not buying anything else) and back to the Jade Factory with plenty of time to spare.

Getting back to the bus proved to be a little problematic as we have a new procedure now – the buses aren’t allowed to pic us up, so we have to take vans up the hill aways to the drop off point to reconnect. It shouldn’t be too bad, but let’s face it, this is where all the tours are meeting and it becomes a little CF pretty quickly. Everyone is milling around, the tour guides are trying to find vans to take everyone back to the buses in groups, and well, you can imagine how it devolves. For some reason Joel is having the toughest time getting vans, but he finally manages to reserve two, whereupon he hustles us out the door and loads us up. Then at the drop off point we can’t find the bus, which is a little hysterical, but we finally find it at the end of the long line of buses and all is well.

Joel lets us “sleep” on the way back, only disturbing us to give us our braided friendship bracelets – great souvenirs, and the ones we got last time certainly worked, since if we tied the knots just right and wore them (which I did a lot) they would bring us back to Guatemala – and they did! Back at the port, we have just enough time to shop a bit in the market, finding another great t-shirt for Ed, then its back on the sip for our nightly routine.

Tomorrow – Nicaragua and the Superbowl!