Green Tummies & Great Tunes

Before all the madness of the past couple of weeks began, our good friend Prof. Gregorio came to town for work purposes, but we were able to squeeze in a bit of pleasure too! Actually Greg's parents met up with him in Antigua too and we enjoyed some traditional Guatemalan cuisine with the 3 of them one night at La Fonda de la Calle Real. Yum! They have the best pepian de pollo (a stew like dish with rice, chicken & a bit of a spicy sauce) - a must try when in Guatemala.

Afterward, they suggested a night cap at one of our favorite restaurants - Panza Verde, named after the notion that people from Antigua have green tummies from eating the abundance of avocados grown here! You might recall our first trip to Panza Verde from this post back in September 2008. Since we hadn't been back since our return to Guatemala, we were a shoo in!

Definitely upscale, but definitely worth it, Panza Verde always has the best live music and just as luck would have it (or a very well planned out evening by Gregorio himself) there was some excellent Cuban Jazz happening that night. Little did we know that Greg was such a huge fan, but there we sat front row listening to the amazing jazz of Buena Vista de Corazón.

Of course a video can't do it justice, but you can get an idea of how great it is here.

Buena Vista de Corazón at Panza Verde from Krista on Vimeo.

It really wasn't that dark in the restaurant......but does it sort of make you want to take a sneaky little vacay to Cuba, or it is just us? Seriously. Cuba - dying to go.

Afterwards Greg got a photo with his idol!

Great night Allen-Pickett family! Can't wait to see you again!

Green Gardens and Tummies!

Ridicuously huge and amazingly georgous, Casa Santo Domingo is a converted colonial convent where the rooms and corridors are decorated in art from that era. We spent some time strolling around the beautiful gardens and discussing our return trip to Antigua.....when we WILL be saying here!

Speaking of hotels, we also changed hotels for our last night in Antigua. Posada Lazos Fuertes, where we stayed the first 2 nights was decent, but was right on a busy, loud street. It supports a good cause - Safe Passage - an organization that aides in the education of children whose parents scavenge in a Guatemala City dump. I also wasn't too thrilled about the bathroom - I'm very particular about cleanliness in my showers! So we did a little research and found Hotel Aurora - and we highly recommend it. It's no Casa Santo Domingo, but still quite nice.

So once again, thanks to Horacio & Nicole we had another good experience. Our second night in Antigua we dined at Panza Verde (traslation - Green Tummy). Nicole told us this restaurant was really good and she was right! Antigua is know for growing avacados and it is said that the people have a green tummy from eating so many. Although we had a little difficultly finding the restaurant, it was worth the search. The atmosphere inside was amazing. There was a beautiful courtyard and live music.