San Salvador

I met this cool yound woman from San Salvador on the plane.  She works in hotel management in Cancun, and speaks English so well, she also teaches it -- which made for good conversation since my Spanish is still less than effective.  Finally after 3 flights, we arrived in San Salvador.  Upon exiting the plane's cabin, the heat and humidity levels was a bit of a rush.  The front of the airport is lined with palm trees, and the view is quite inviting.  We caught a taxi to San Salvador, as the airport is some 40 minutes South of the city.  The area is moutainous and covered with dense tropical jungle.  San Salvador rests on many hills with a huge, largely undeveloped mountain in the near distance.  The city's districts are spread out and much too far apart to walk from one to the other.  Taxis are expensive -- comparable to US taxi prices.  El Salvador does not have its own currency.  It uses the US dollar, and prices for food, lodging, etc., are not much less than they are in the US.  Andrea, the young lady I met on the plane, suggested we stay in Zona Rosa, which our guidebooks confirmed to be one of the nicer parts of town.  After resting up a bit we headed to the center of Zona Rosa for a bit to eat.  We ate at a high end seafood restaurant, and the food was nothing less than superb.  Yev said the steak he was served melted in his mouth, and was the best cooked he'd ever had.  I ordered some white fish, don't know what it was, but it was equally as good as Yev's steak.  I cannot recall having fish that was better prepared.  The next day we took a taxi to the mall.  Yes the mall was on the large side but what I liked about it was its use of water for style.  In from the of the mall sunlight shimmered off the body of flowing water.  Inside the mall, right next to the escalator, water was in free fall from the ceiling, some 50 feet up, into a hole that lay beneath the ground floor.  The interior walls of this mall were like none I've seen before.  Bright, solid oranges, pinks, yellows, and greens and blues painted the walls.  Much different than the stale whites that cover US malls.  By taxi we discovered than there was little else outside of Zona Rosa that was of any interest to us.  Downtown was busy with pedestrian traffic and vehicles, but lacked beauty.  It was beyond filthy, there were no tall or interesting buildings, and other than bargins for various wares, there was nothing to do.