Friday Night Lights

The Mariscal Sucre. AKA "Gringolandia." This is the new town, where all the tourists (and a lot of locals) go for a night out of eating, drinking, and dancing at all the trendy, hip places. Jennifer and I thought that it wouldn't be a quiteño experience if we didn't try to spend at least one night hitting the party scene. The plan was this: go out to eat at a nice restaurant, then find a nightclub and dance 'til the feet said stop. Phase I: Eating. The picture you see is us at a very nice restaurant called La Boca del Lobo (mouth of the wolf). They actually sell Wolf Meat Empanadas. Jennifer ordered a chicken and noodle dish, and I had some fried Yuca balls stuffed with cheese, potatoes, and shrimp plus a set of really tiny spinach empanadas. And boy were they awesome! But the best part was the dessert: Jennifer thoroughly enjoyed her Nutella crepes and I wolfed down (no pun intended) my white chocolate/Amaretto tarts topped with blackberries. Having been satisfactorily fed, we then set out to accomplish Phase II: Dancing. And this is where the night turned a bit south...

For starters, it started raining while we were eating. And neither of us had any kind of umbrella or raincoat. Thus, we were drowned in rain when we left. To make things worse, we couldn't find the nightclub that was recommended to us by Vane (we searched high and low). We actually had to go back to the restaurant to ask them for a nightclub recommendation. They gave us the name of Bungalow 6, a nightclub/lounge/bar not too far from the restaurant. So we went there... and it was virtually empty. Granted, it was 9:30, but even by midnight, there was NOBODY dancing, even though more people had shuffled in from the rain. So Jennifer and I decided we'd try to kickstart things. So there we were, the only two people full-out dancing on a half-empty dance floor. It didn't work, and I'm sure we deflected business from the place (at least my spastic moves probably did). So we left. After another round of wandering, we found a place where people were actually dancing. But as we soon found out, the place was more like a live Spanish crazy TV show, with extremely loud, zany music and people acting a fool. So that didn't work either. Resigned to our fate of a night where awesome dancing was replaced with wetheads and ringing ears, we took a cab back to la Casa. And so ended our first foray into the Quito nightlife. But as they say: those who dance and run away live to dance another day!