El Panecillo

Here is El Panecillo, Quito's most distinctive landmark. This is the Space Needle or the Eiffel Tower of Quito.

The Virgin of Quito is the landmark, but El Panecillo, which means bread roll in Spanish, is what everybody calls it. El Panecillo is the name of the hill, which is small and round like a roll.

This was the beginning of the heavy metal concert that I mentioned in an earlier post. This is the Plaza of San Francisco. The concert doesn't look like much, but it was loud. This is about as close as I wanted to get. The bands were local. Interestingly, a number of hard rock bands put Quito on their tours, and there is a kind of scene here. AeroSmith was the last band through.



Here is a close up of the Virgin of Quito. What surprised me about this statue when I finally made it up there was its size. It is much bigger than it looks like from below. The ring below her feet is actually an observation deck that you can climb up to. There are some people near the base of the statue to use for reference.