Our first full day!

 Lots of good guesses so far on the blog but no right answers yet!  It was a busy day today exploring our first city.  Coyle and I took a walking tour around to some of the most famous places including a lot of religious spaces from throughout the history of the country (we blurred the background so we don't give away the whole picture!)  

One of the things that Coyle and I are both interested in is "dark history", or the history of oppression, genocide, despotism, colonization and other dark parts of history.  We are not interested in the dark horrible stories but rather in the resilience of the people who pushed back against this dark history and how nations rebuild afterwards.  Much of our trip is based on this interest and today was no exception.  We visited several museums and we also saw some old printing presses. Coyle enjoyed reliving his "Newsies" days checking them out! We also visited a mother that I wouldn't want to cross  

The most interesting part of one museum was that we were given a tour by an older man who didn't speak English.  Our English speaking guide joined us and translated everything he said.  She had never been there before because this place is not usually on the tours but we wanted to see it.    The English guide was getting annoyed with the guide and partway through the tour she started telling us that she wasn't translating everything he said because she didn't agree with what he was saying because he was downplaying the violence this country faced.  It was a really interesting interaction that illustrated the generational differences in beliefs about history.  

We finished up our day with a sunset dinner at a rooftop restaurant.  Coyle said the ice cream was the best part! 

Here's a clue for today: we learned about boiled birds today which made me think twice about my chicken soup for dinner.