Alyssa always wakes up before me so I didn't think there'd be any way to surprise her for her birthday since we do everything together. Ironically however, I had forgotten to turn off my alarm clock setting from the previous morning so it went off at 8:00am. Somehow, Alyssa did not wake up and I seized my opportunity. I had no idea what to expect from the town since we hadn't seen any of it the night before, but I just took a left onto the street outside our hostel and determined to keep going until I found a market of some kind. Luckily after about 6 blocks I found an Exito! It was a huge Exito with tons of stuff to choose from. I was able to get birthday candles and a card as well as fruit and yogurt to make breakfast in bed. Their cakes were all tres leches which I knew Alyssa didn't like, so I figured I could find a bakery around town with cakes. As I was walking back, I decided to go one block over in search of a bakery. I stumbled upon one that did make cakes but unfortunately they only had one chocolate cake and it didn't look very birthday festive. I asked if they could write on it for me and they agreed. I sat and waited impatiently for 30 minutes for them to write "Happy Birthday Alyssa" on the cake. I was worried that she would wake up and go out and get coffee or breakfast before I could get back. Finally they finished the cake and I stopped at a little cafe to pick up some coffee.
She was still in bed when I got back (she was awake but too cold to get out of the blankets) so everything worked out!
I made us a fruit salad and we hung out in the central area of our hostal debating what to do with our day.
We went walking around town, taking in the sites and looking at all the different churches.
We stopped in one church and lot a candle for our mother, as she said she always used to light candles for us when my parents stopped in churches in Europe.
There wasn't a ton to see in the town so we finally decided to get some lunch. We had seen a very cute cafe as we were out walking, so we headed back there. The waiter told us (in Spanish of course) that the restaurant would not be serving lunch until 12:30. We found it odd since that was sort of late in the day but said that was fine and we would wait the 15 minutes and have coffee in the meantime. Our coffees were very cute and came with little heart shaped chocolate covered coffee beans.
15 minutes later, we noticed that they had shut the outer doors, turned their sign to say "closed" and taken off their aprons. This was not a good sign. Once again, we had misinterpreted the Spanish and they were actually closing at 12:30. We left feeling slightly defeated, but went in search of another cafe to eat at. Luckily I had scoped the area out earlier and we were able to find another one pretty easily.
We headed to the Exito after lunch to get some wine and nail polish to have a spa day in the hostal. We had tried to find a manicure/pedicure place in the town to treat ourselves, but the only one we found was pretty sketchy. In lieu of that, we figured we'd do it ourselves which would be cheaper and then we'd have nail polish for months to come.
I had tried to look up nice restaurants in Pasto that we could go to for dinner but hadn't had much luck. Alyssa said she was in the mood for Italian so I asked the girl who worked at our hostal if she knew of anything. She recommended "La Piccolo" and said it was reall the only Italian place in town. I looked it up and though it had no reviews, it did have a Facebook page and the food looked good, so we thought we'd give it a shot.
We hailed a cab and were surprised by how far of a drive it was. After being in the cab for almost 20 minutes, I was starting to get a bit worried. Finally, he pulled up in front of the place and I was happy he had gotten the right restaurant and wasn't driving us out to the outskirts of town for some other reason. The restaurant was empty, but it was only 7:30 which is pretty early. We sat down and decided to order some wine. The only wine they sold by the glass was a "copa de vino tinto caliente". I know that caliente means hot, but I thought it could also mean spicy which is what I believed this said. I could not have been more wrong. The wine came out boiling hot with a sugar rim. We both about died laughing. So much for our Spanish skills; we were 0-2 today.
Alyssa ordered the bolognese and I got some three part pasta, which had three different pastas in different sauces. We wanted to get antipasto as an appetizer but the waiter said that their antipasto was bread with melted cheese and that the bruschetta was better, so we went with that. The bruschetta was not very good; it was basically dry bread with chopped tomatoes on it. The pastas weren't great either- Alyssa's bolognese had no meat in it so it was basically just expensive spaghetti and my pasta had a pesto sauce made out of peanuts and an Alfredo with absolutely no taste. I asked the waiter if they had house wine by the glass and he said no, only by the bottle. What kind of Italian place doesn't have wine by the glass? We gave up, paid the bill and headed to Exito to buy another bottle of wine.
When we got back to the hostal, Alyssa went to use the bathroom which was the perfect time to call my parents and younger sister on Skype and bring out the cake. It all went pretty well except that the number 2 on her cake kept trying to fall over so we blew out the candles accidentally before it was time and had to re-light.
It turns out the cake was chocolate with orange in it- so awful! The whole day had been kind of a bust but I did as much as I could with what I had! We spent the rest of the evening drinking wine and watching foreign movies on my iPad.
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