We took a walking tour of La Antigua offered by Elizabeth Bell of Antigua Tours; she moved with her parents from Palo Alto, CA to La Antigua when she was 14 years old. She provided some neat anthropological and archaeological context to some of the things we saw around town, but US$20/person is a bit steep (IMHO).

We started out in Parque Central, went to City Hall, saw a church and some ruins, and walked around town.

One of the stops on the tour was a jade factory, where we learned that there are two types of jade in the world, mineralogically completely unrelated to each other: jadeite and nephrite. Jade is formed by tectonic plates smashing against each other. Guatemala is one of the principal sources in the world of jadeite, and not coincidentally has suffered from earthquakes. La Antigua used to be the capital city of Guatemala until it was destroyed by earthquake in 1775.

That evening we went to the rehearsal dinner at La Casa de la Fonda Real: