In retrospect our first travel day probably should have been less ambitious; as arranged it entailed 5 airports, 4 planes, in 24 hours. This schedule combined with our major parental oversight of not loading any new movies on the kids iPads, made for a tough 24 hours.  I have read a number of blogs written by proficient traveling families which state in a variety of ways “Our kids have never said they want to go home”...Well one of ours did on the first day; actually turned around on the gangway of the plane and started walking back.  We had to use our mean-parents voice, usually reserved for at-home-use only, to get the mutineer to turn around and get on the final plane.  But that actually makes it sounds worse then it was..most of the time it was just a bunch of sitting around and eating bad airport food, but it was a long day. 

We finally arrived at Quito, Ecuador’s main airport, at 12:30 AM,  at which time we had to convince the immigration officer that Yoda was in fact our child even though he no longer had longish blond hair like his passport photo.  Spotting the simple cardboard sign reading “Perozo” was truly heart warming.  The kids were thrilled that there were no working seat belts in the back seat, as we zoomed the 45 minutes from the new airport to our reserved apartment in the historical district .  At roughly 10,000 ft altitude, it was cold, and we were extremely happy to crawl into our beds, topped with big fluffy duvets.  We slept till 10am; That simply never happens in our family.  Pulling open the shades, we were treated to our first glimpse of Quito. 

 The excitement of the kids was palpable and I couldn’t get the smile off my face.  After cooking up some breakfast from the supplies provided by our accommodations, (A separate post coming soon about our wonderful apartment) we set off to explore Quito’s old town, the world’s first UNESCO Heritage site.