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Lunch and More Shopping in Antigua
The hotel we had lunch at was very accommodating and had a great environment. Although the service seemed exceptional, it soon deteriorated to a long wait for many of us. My mother and I ordered chicken with some local marinade. Out the 28 people traveling with us, it seemed as though only four of us got our meal every 10 minutes. As the number of people who were without a meal decreased, it became like game where you had to figure out the odds of your meal being delivered next. Finally after about half of the table had already finished we got our meal. Then we had another crisis when it came time to pay for our meals individually when our orders got mixed up, and once we had already paid, they wanted to give us each a 10% discount for the trouble. Good thing we all agreed not to repeat the process again, but then it took another few minutes to get the correct credit cards back. After that ordeal, we went back to the same shopping area we were at before and continued to shop. I remember that there were some shops in a courtyard that were very nice but once you left the courtyard, there was a building with aisles of shop owners. The aisles were about half the size of the ones you would find at your local grocery store which made it very hard to shop. The people were so desperate to get you to buy one of their products they basically pleaded you which made it hard to say no and walk away. After venturing there two times, my dad asked me to show him around the cramped area. I knew this wouldn't end well but he insisted. We were walking towards the back when this t-shirt store owner approached us and kept pressuring us into looking at his products. We said we would look a little later, I guess what we meant to say was "no thanks". As we were leaving to go meet the rest of the gang, the same man stopped us and insisted we look at his little shop. After minutes of persuasion and laughs, my dad finally bought another Gallo (the name of a popular beer company in Guatemala) for almost half the price of where he bought the first one. After our adventure, we returned to the bus and since we didn't have time to visit the Central Market (due to the incident at lunch), we went back to the hotel and got ready to depart the next morning.
The hotel we had lunch at was very accommodating and had a great environment. Although the service seemed exceptional, it soon deteriorated to a long wait for many of us. My mother and I ordered chicken with some local marinade. Out the 28 people traveling with us, it seemed as though only four of us got our meal every 10 minutes. As the number of people who were without a meal decreased, it became like game where you had to figure out the odds of your meal being delivered next. Finally after about half of the table had already finished we got our meal. Then we had another crisis when it came time to pay for our meals individually when our orders got mixed up, and once we had already paid, they wanted to give us each a 10% discount for the trouble. Good thing we all agreed not to repeat the process again, but then it took another few minutes to get the correct credit cards back. After that ordeal, we went back to the same shopping area we were at before and continued to shop. I remember that there were some shops in a courtyard that were very nice but once you left the courtyard, there was a building with aisles of shop owners. The aisles were about half the size of the ones you would find at your local grocery store which made it very hard to shop. The people were so desperate to get you to buy one of their products they basically pleaded you which made it hard to say no and walk away. After venturing there two times, my dad asked me to show him around the cramped area. I knew this wouldn't end well but he insisted. We were walking towards the back when this t-shirt store owner approached us and kept pressuring us into looking at his products. We said we would look a little later, I guess what we meant to say was "no thanks". As we were leaving to go meet the rest of the gang, the same man stopped us and insisted we look at his little shop. After minutes of persuasion and laughs, my dad finally bought another Gallo (the name of a popular beer company in Guatemala) for almost half the price of where he bought the first one. After our adventure, we returned to the bus and since we didn't have time to visit the Central Market (due to the incident at lunch), we went back to the hotel and got ready to depart the next morning.
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