I calculated it very approximately, but 3 February 2013 was, for us, well over 24 hours of travel.

We woke up in our own bed in Amsterdam at 04:00, and were out the door about 45 minutes later to catch the first bus 197 of the day to Schiphol. A very nice fellow traveler took our pictures, looking sleepy & excited, ready to go.

Our first flight departed Schiphol at 06:50, arriving in Brussels an hour later. We had breakfast and even slept a while, waiting for our 11:40 flight to Atlanta, which was itself a 10-hour flight.

In Atlanta, there was slightly less time, although we had wanted to deal with a few essentials while in an American airport. I’ve been in the Atlanta airport before, and it is one of the friendliest airports I’ve ever been to. Wow!

Then we had a 5-hour flight to Quito, which is, however, in the same time zone as Atlanta. The downside on this flight was the service. It wasn’t as new of a plane as the one we’d taken from Brussels, but they used the same food & had the same training, I must assume. Both were Delta, which I mostly like, for their funny info videos especially, but little things were off. The exact same dinner rolls, which had been so deliciously warm on the flight from Brussels, were served like cold rocks on the flight to Quito. Snacks were provided, but trash was never collected… That sort of thing. I didn’t mind, but it was enough to notice.

After the flight, which was on time, we stood in line over an hour for passport control in Quito, then got randomly selected for customs check. Then we got into a taxi, in which I surprised myself by chatting in Spanish pretty easily with the driver the entire way to Jose’s apartment, where we are staying for 4 nights.

It was after 01:00 when we arrived, and Jose was sweet enough to only give us a brief orientation to his absolutely gorgeous apartment before we showered and hit the sack. Viva la cama!!!

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Location:Avenue Federico Gonzalez Suarez,Quito Canton,Ecuador