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Ecuador
Finding the quiet charm of Quito
“You know the flooby dooby!” he looks at us in the beseeching way only a seven-year-old can.
A seven-year-old Ecuadorian boy who speaks perfect English even though his mum and dad barely speak the language.
We’re sitting in the English Bookshop in Quito. It’s a second-hand bookshop, the kind with floor to ceiling bookshelves and the scent of pages and lost worlds, of adventure and stories to discover.
The shop has become our second home and the owner, Mark, an Englishman who once lived in Queensland and is now married to an Ecuadorian woman, has become our friend. And well, there’s RG, the seven-year-old who ‘works’ part time in the shop and has been sitting with me for more than an hour looking at wildlife photos and videos on my phone.
He knows them all, the koalas and kangaroos, the capybaras and jaguars, though he’s a little stumped by the echidna and the platypus. He hasn’t come across those before.
But the flooby dooby has us stumped.
He’s sure we must have seen it.
“You know it,” he says again, almost pleading with me.
I rack my brain, thinking through the catalogue of animals that might sound like ‘flooby dooby’.
And then it hits me.
“The blue-footed booby?” I ask and pull up a shot of the famous Galapagos Island bird on my phone.
“That’s it,” he says, triumphantly. “The flooby dooby.”
We spend a lot of our time in Quito in this little bookshop. It becomes our local, our little respite from the craziness of travel.
We find ourselves coming back here between trips throughout the country to chat to Mark and Sebastian, his sidekick, to see RG and his dad and to drink cups of tea. Black tea. It can be hard to get tea in South America, and Ecuador proves to be a little hit and miss when it comes to tea.
But the bookshop is not the only thing to see in Quito, Ecuador’s beautiful capital city. While many travellers spend as little time as possible here before heading out to the Galapagos Islands, we’ve chosen to spend more time in the old town and to explore some of the rest of what Ecuador has to offer. Afterall, we’ve both been to Galapagos Islands previously on tours.
Quito has a lovely UNESCO-listed old town at its heart. It’s full of charming Spanish-inspired buildings, cobble stone streets and churches. And while it’s a city that sometimes makes its way into the news for violence and trouble, we find a city of calm with a friendly heart and great cafes and restaurants.
We visit the City Museum after the security guard drags us in and tells us it’s free. We visit Basilica del Voto Nacional, the Basilica of the National Vow, where we take a tour.
Our guide, Alexis, tells us not just about the cathedral, but a little about the city centre as well, bringing it all to life. Building work started on the Basilica in the 1880s but it wasn’t finished until 1988. Some people say it’s still not finished because when the site is finished, the end of the world will come.
If you step out onto the balcony of the Basilica you can see directly across to the Virgen del Panecillo, the Virgin Mary statue, that sits high on El Panecillo hill in Quito. The statue, including the base, is 41 metres high, making it the tallest statue in South America. And before you ask, yes, apparently it’s even taller than the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil.
It’s also worth walking out onto the roof structure and climbing into the towers, not only do you get beautiful views of the city centre, but you can get a little closer to the gargoyles, look closely and you’ll notice the gargoyles are actually blue-footed boobies (or in the words of a seven-year-old flooby doobies) and other wildlife from the Galapagos Islands.
The Basilica provides a commanding presence over the city, but it’s just one of 62 churches in the historic centre, that’s 62 churches in eight square kilometres, according to Alexis.
We wander along the city’s famous Calle de La Ronda, which is all but deserted the day we are here, and head over to Plaza de San Francisco to people watch. We have tea at the quirky little café Los Podmitos, lunch at the artsy Artifice cafe and dinner at Lena Quitena, which serves up a delicious steak and views across the old town. All three charm us with their unique interiors and friendly staff.
At Museo Catedral Primada de Quito – the Quito Cathedral – we wander out onto the domes to view the town square from above, we stop in for a beer and dinner at the delicious and very friendly Angel’s Town Brewing and eat dinner at the fabulous Boconada, where we meet a couple from Germany who we join a week later at the same restaurant because we got along with them so well and because the pizza was so tasty.
We visit the Basilica and Convent of San Francisco, the oldest and most important religious site in Ecuador and home of the first brewery in South America.
Sadly for Ade, there was no beer on offer when we were there, but it did make for an interesting display in the monastery grounds.
On Easter Friday, we get lost in a throng of purple cloaked paraders – cucuruchos – during the procession of Jesus del Gran Poder (Jesus of Great Power). In colonial times the purple cloaks and cones were worn by locals who had sinned and were seeking to repent. But on Good Friday the street is awash with purple and there is a carnival-like atmosphere.
Afterwards we grab a quick burger from the family-owned Apolos Burger Beer and Ba. It’s a very tasty burger but what really draws us in are the owner and his family, who share their drinks with us and chat to us in broken Spanish and English as though we too are family. At the end of the night, as we are about to leave, the young granddaughter walks up to us and gives us each a hug to say goodbye.
We make it inside just three of those 62 churches, spending our time in cafes instead trying as many different takes on hot chocolate as we can – the Ecuadorians are very proud of their chocolate, they’ll tell you it’s the best in the world and it’s where most of the world’s chocolate comes from. It is VERY good. Even the dark chocolate isn’t bitter here.
On our way to the Basilica we get dragged into one of the many souvenir shops to try the local chocolate wine (it’s very good, so good that we buy a bottle).
But it’s not all chocolate and churches. We travel outside Quito to Cotopaxi to climb a volcano and to Mindo to chase waterfalls and where we stay in a cloud forest.
And between each visit we return to the bookshop, to see RG and his Dad and Mark and Sebastian.
And to have a quiet cup of tea among the books.
And, of course, we now only ever call the Blue-Footed Booby, the flooby dooby.
Fast Facts
We travelled to Ecuador in 2017, 2024 and, on this trip, in 2025.
We stayed at Hotel and Roof Crown King Experience by David, San Marcos Cultural House and Baltico, all were good, all were very different experiences.
We were in Quito for almost two weeks, with trips to Mindo and Cotopaxi in between.
Was it long enough? We had plenty of time to enjoy Quito and to relax and just soak up the local atmosphere.
Highlights: The English Bookshop! Wandering through the city streets and stopping for hot chocolate along the way. Seeing the gargoyles on the side of the Basilica.
Read more about our adventures in South America here.
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