Alliance Francaise is an international group that promotes French culture and language. Their Cuenca branch put on a massive music festival the last two days. There was very little tie-in to anything French, but there was music for everyone — jazz (our favorite), rock, metal, rap, electronic (actually a DJ when we went by that […]
Mr MaGoo
Mauri MaGoo is a polished professional magician here in Cuenca. We first saw him last October in a show with four other local magicians. Tonight’s show was advertised as being just him, but there were actually several others, plus a ventriloquist as Emcee. Unfortunately, the show involved a lot of very fast Spanish, very […]
For A Plate of Lentils
Mágico Herrera performs at Apu Teatro I have said before that there is always something to do in Cuenca. We heard about a new theater opening around the corner that was going to open with a puppet show tonight. We figured it would be a piece of interesting local color. We were rather surprised from […]
Festival de Comedias de Un Acto
Cuenca is often called the cultural capital of Ecuador. Symphony is always free, and there are multiple free music venues every week. Tonight saw the inauguration of a new theater group in town — The Azuay Community Theater, with their Festival of One-Act Plays (yes, I know the Spanish says ‘comedy’, but their English title […]
Love and Passion
Dinner at “That’s Amore” had only two choices tonight — “menu of love” or “menu of passion.” We had both! Valentine’s Day seems a bigger deal here in Cuenca than back in Berkeley. All day long, we saw women walking with single roses, and couples arm-in-arm. Though young couples dominated, there was plenty of […]
Free Music Everywhere
Free jazz concert in the plaza behind Iglesia Todos Santos We continue to be amazed by the amount of free music around Cuenca. A couple nights ago we were walking towards a restaurant and heard a band tuning up. We wandered over a block and found a hard rock band playing on a temporary stage […]
Another Brick in the Wall
The Cuenca Symphony had their first concert of the year tonight and, as always, it was free admission. This is a full size, professional symphony on caliber with any other city in the world. There were 54 musicians on stage, about half string and half horns. The program was varied, running from the classics of […]
Jupiter!
We have tried to get into the local planetarium several times, but were always turned away because it was either closed or the tickets were sold out. We decided to try again today. We walked to the planetarium (it is only a 10 minute walk from our condo), and had lunch at one of our […]
Music Everywhere
Brian Gary performing at LaParola We have always enjoyed live music in small intimate surroundings, but we really have rarely gone to them. In Berkeley there were plenty of venues, but they required us getting into a car, driving to a specific destination, finding a parking place, listening to (usually expensive) music, then reversing the […]
Strange Movie Theater Antics
After a lazy day, we finally went to see Thor 2 in 3D at the Millenium Theater tonight. Millennium usually has current movies shown in two theaters — one in English with Spanish subtitles (the one we choose, given our current language skills), and the other dubbed in Spanish. They usually have one major movie […]