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Colombia South America

Rainy Afternoon in Bogota

This afternoon, after my trip to El Mercado del Paloquemao i set out from the hostel and walked up to the Museum of Modern Art. On my way i stopped for lunch at cute and charming little restaurant filled with plants and bric-a-brac.

I managed to explain the vegetarian situation and received bean & barley soup, rice, beans, plantains, salad, potatoes, and lemonade for $3. The Modern Art Museum was small and the art was mostly only ok, but there were a few good photographs and paintings. It wouldn’t call it a ‘must see’ but it was decent and admission was only $1. (Generally, of all of the churches and museums i have visited, all of the churches were free and this was the only museum that charged.) I then walked farther north to the Museo Nationales, which had a good selection of Colombian prehistoric artifacts right up to 20thC paintings. None of the descriptions were in English, so it made for a quick walk through, but it was a good museum.

When i left it had started to rain and i was about 30 blocks from the hostel so i sat at the only cafe with outdoor seating that i found and sat under an umbrella and smoked a cigar until the rain stopped. Of course once i left it started to pour and i got soaked and have been cold and wet ever since. The first two days here were very warm and sunny but the second two days have had intermittent showers and rain.

On the way back to the hostel i was passed by a group of about three dozen soldiers in full combat camouflage, helmets and boots, and carrying machine guns. I don’t know what it was all about but the people on the street did not pay any attention, so i guess it is a usual occurrence.

After resting back at the hotel with yet another cup of hot coca tea in the kitchen by the wood burning stove, i went out for dinner. I think I’ll stay in for the rest of the evening, as it is warm here and i have an earlyish flight to Cartagena.

Bogota has been great. Four days was perfect. If i had any more time i would have done more day trips out of the city but i feel quite satisfied.
Buenos Noches.

Colombia South America

Mercado de Paloquemao

This morning i set out immediately after breakfast to the Mercado de Palequemao, a giant market selling fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, flowers, and other random food items. I walked from my hotel which was a fairly long walk. I stuck to the main streets so i would not get lost, which meant that the streets i walked down were busy, loud, crowded, and not particularly attractive. That being said, i really enjoyed the walk as it provided a good view of non-touristy Bogota.

Finally reaching the market i was overwhelmed by the selection of produce.

This might be the best market ever in that regard. They had everything i could imagine and things i could not have dreamed of. It was so colorful and loud and everything looked so delicious. As i had already eaten about 6 different fruits for breakfast, i ate only one thing: mangosteens. I have been wanting to try them for a wile and bought one. It is, and i am not exaggerating, the best fruit i have ever tasted. It defies description, but it is a hard purple shell with sweet white cloves of heaven inside. I went back and bought a bag and sat on the curb with some vendors and ate my through half the bag. Whatever you are doing right now, stop, find a mangosteen and eat it. You can thank me later.

I then walked through the flower stalls and the butcher area where whole cows and emormous pigs were being freshly carved up for sale. After wandering aimlessly in delight (attracting quite a bit of attention), i sat at one of the curb side cafes on a plastic chair on the sidewalk and drank some great coffee and smoked some cigarillos with the butchers who were on their breaks, eating and drinking in their bloody smocks. It was great.

I then walked back to the hotel with my remaining mangosteen and one other unidentifiable monstrous, green fruit that i will try tomorrow. (Once i figure out what all these exotic, tropical fruits are – and have the ability to upload photos – i will probably devote a post just to them.)

I would definitely recommend a visit to this market. It looks like it is in a sketchy area of town, but it seemed safe and offered a great look at daily life in Bogota.

Colombia South America

Hungry Vegetarian seeks Sustenance on Mountaintop

My first full day in Bogota started by a walk up Calle 7 to a Sunday flea market that i had read about. The walk was great, as the sun was shining, i had a cup of fresh mango and papaya slices and everyone was out on their bikes. On every Sunday, the main streets in Candelaria are closed to vehicular traffic and are taken over by cyclists, joggers and roller bladers. Every Sunday! (Take that, Portland.)

I stopped in to a couple of churches on the way, both of which were mid-mass. It is a bit like Portugal here in that every time i go into a cathedral there seems to be a mass underway. Seldom are they dormant.

The flea market was full of things that were not quite antiques, but junk that was fun to browse through. Lots of military accoutrements, old telephones, books, and toys. A man had a bucket of giant snails and was selling their snail slime as a skin care remedy. There i had a glass of lulo juice – lulo being a fruit native to the area. It is quite tart, but refreshing.

After the flea market i went to the Museo del Oro (free on sundays) and strolled through the impressive collection of gold artifacts and objects from Colombia history. It is a small museum, but impressive and worth a visit.

After the museum i walked for a ways up hill past vendors of grilled meats, blood sausage, corn and religious artifacts to the cable car station to go up to the top of the mountain to visit Monserrat, mountain with a white church perched atop. The church is visible from everywhere in the city and accessible by cable car, funicular, or a steep hike. The church, although very sacred is not that special, and quite plain. What was great was the view of the city and mountains and the stroll through the market, which was selling various crafts and souvenirs. (Nothing that i wanted to buy, mind you.) At that point it started to rain, so i ducked into a hall of food sellers, all cooking up the same dishes, rice and potatos or soup with chicken, blood sausage, pig intestines, and other identifiable meat bits. I was looking to see if there was anything vegetarian i could have when i was approached by the waitress who said something incomprehensible to me in Spanish. I do not know what she said but i blurted out two phrases i know, liked together: I am a vegetarian and i am hungry. She understood and made me a plate of rice, fired plantains, avocado slices, potatoes, beans, and hot peppers. It was huge and delicious and about $3.

After descending from Monserrat i continued to wander, through squares, and down a street of vendors aggressively selling (almost exclusively) pinata fillings, past particularly run down streets where the amount of garbage, dog feces and dilapidated buildings increased, to an area called the Macarena. It is a quasi-bohemian, trendy neighborhood, about 25 blocks or so north, with lots of international eateries and pubs. More upscale by far than Candalaria. I had a cigar on a patio and then hailed a taxi to take me another 50 or so blocks north to the area called Zona Rosa.

Zona Rosa is a fancy neighborhood. The streets are lined with large trees, it is clean and the sidewalks are not filled with dangerous holes. Here i found stores like Zara, Ferrigamo, and Hugo Boss, a movie theatre, a mall, a Hard Rock Cafe, and many fancy looking restaurants, bars and hotels. It feels a hundred years away from Caldelaria. It was pleasant to stroll around and has a couple of streets (Zona T) that are pedestrian and only lined with eateries. It was a little upsacle for my liking, but i sat down on the patio of a middle eastern restaurant and smoked a hookah and had hummus and Turkish coffee until it got too cold to sit outside at which point i hailed a taxi and went back to my hostel, where the kitchen was filled with guests cooking dinner. I was fairly tired after all my walking, so after a good lie down in the hammock i went to bed.

And let me take this opportunity too dispel another stupid warning i received from people and books before coming here. I was told to only take taxis after dark (which i have established as nonsense, as walking is fine), AND i was told never to hail them on the street but only to call for them. This posed a problem as i do not have a phone. But as it turns out everyone hails taxis on the street. They are yellow and licensed and use meters and have GPS and are quite safe. So there, fear mongerers!

Ok, i am off for another day of exploring. Thanks for checking on me.
d

Colombia South America

Bogota – first impressions

I have arrived! I landed in Bogota this afternoon and made my way into the city by taxi. I am staying at the Anandamayi Hostel which is ridiculously beautiful. It is an old colonial house surrounding three courtyards filled with hammocks, little ponds, flowering trees, and hummingbird likd creatures. My room is whitewashed with rustic wood beams. There are shared bathrooms and a rustic kitchen for guests to cook and take breakfast. It appears to be run by young women who are very helpful but do not speak English. This is all very charming and i can’t wait to end the day in a hammock looking at the stars.

After settling in i went for a wander through the Caldalaria district (where my hostel is), which is the historic part of town.

I walked through the Bolivar plaza, which is surrounded by stately government buildings and filled with buskers, protesters, fruit sellers, and llamas. Llamas everywhere! They are probably just brough in for tourists to take photos of, but still: llamas! Not surprisingly i walked all afternoon through the streets of this neighborhood. The streets are rough, shabby, dirty and filled with dangerous holes, but they are also lined with beautifully colored colonial-style buildings with balconies and flowers; many of these buildings housing tiny cafes and bodegas. There are vendors everywhere selling candy, cigarettes, fruit, corn, and fresh juice. I have seen numerous groups of buskers playing what i can old call Colombian style salsa. It is terrific. One of the groups attracted a group of old men in suits who were salsa dancing solo for almost an hour for a crowd of onlookers. It was very entertaining.

I tried a few Colombian treats today. I went to a famous cafe called La Puerta Falsa and had Chocolate Completo, which is dark hot chocolate served with bread and butter and white cheese. You tear off pieces of the cheese and put it in the hot chocolate until it gets all melty and then you eat it with a spoon and dunk in the bread and butter. Marvelous. I can’t believe i have never had this before. I also tried some new fruit. No idea what it was but it was hard and fibrous and orange and served with honey. I didn’t care for it. For dinner i bought an arepa con queso from a street vendor cooking them over coals and had a chicha, which is a type of corn based beer. I don’t like beer, but this is quite different and i thought i should try it. It doesn´t taste anything like beer, but more like a thick fermented bready grog. It wasn´t bad, but i don´t think i would have it again. I smoked a lovely partagas torpedo on a street called the Funnel, which is a narrow, colorful street, filled with bars and cafes and young kids drinking beer and smoking in the street.

The city has so much amazing graffiti. Certainly some of it is just sloppy but much of it is amazing and ranges from whimsical to political. On the note of art, i visited the Botero museum today, which features, Botero’s bright, obese figures but also a good collection of art by Picasso, Ernst, etc. It was small but very impressive.

So far i have not encountered anyone who speaks ensligh, including the women who run the hostel, so i am relying on my rudimentary spanish, complemented by lots of smiling and nodding.

Ok, that is sort of a jumbled introduction, but i have only been here a half a day and am suffering from a combination of mild jet lag and mild altitude sickness, which has manifested itself in a headache. I think i might go out and see if the area is a dangerous as everyone suggested.

I will write again tomorrow. Sorry for the typos. i am not proof reading and it is a weird keyboard.
That is all for now.
Adios.
d

Europe Italy San Marino

In and Out of Italy

Yesterday, having seen much of Bologna the previous day, Betty-Lou suggested that we take a trip to the sea so we caught a train to Rimini on the Adriatic. Rimini is a prosperous feeling town with the expected sunny piazzas and beaches…or at least we assume there were beaches. We never did actually make it to the shore.

San Marino (the city) is the capital of San Marino (the country) and it located atop a small but high mountain and seems to be entirely made up of medieval towers and walls running dangerously along the jagged peaks of the mountain. It was a delight to explore their craggy nooks and crannies. The streets were tremendously steep and lined with shops – mostly selling jewelry, alcohol, and weapons. It seems that San Marino is one of those countries with very low tax on everything and oddly it attracts a disproportionate number of Russian tourists/shoppers. They were everywhere by the busload buying up bag-loads of merchandise. Many of the signs and menus were even posted in Russian.

So we spent the afternoon climbing the hills and walls and snacking on cheese and bread and watching the changing of the guard atop the castle before heading back to Bologna, via Rimini, quite exhausted.

It was a very long day, but well worth it, as we got to add an unexpected country to the list. (yes, there is a list)

Europe Portugal

Bats in the Bibliotheque

We arrived here Saturday morning after a short & lovely trains ride (first class) through pastoral environs. Coimbra is a town dating back about nearly 1000 years. It was originally the capital of Portugal and presently is best know for being home to one of the oldest universities in Europe. There is a a winding, walled historic centre on a hilltop surrounding the university (the area where we are staying).

We are staying at a small bed & breakfast, Casa Pombal. It has ten tiny rooms surrounding a precarious flight of stairs up four stories. (Dawn & Ron: the climb is like the Biscuit Palace in New Orleans.) Everything is bright and cheerful, including the small courtyard patio, filled with flowers. Our room is in the attic with excellent views of the city & river.

We first visited the university, which is from the 1500s. It was quite impressive. There were ceremonial halls and classrooms that looked like they belongs at Hogwarts, and a lovely church, but the best thing of all was the library, the Biblioteca Joanina. It was the most beautiful library i have ever seen. It was built in the early 1700s and houses 300,000 ancient books in ornate black & gold bookcases inlaid with chinoiserie designs. the ceilings and archways look like something out of a baroque church and there are huge reading tables and ladders to reach the uppermost volumes. The extra cool thing is that it is also home to a flock of bats that that sleep in hidden crevices and come out at night to eat insects that may otherwise destroy the books, so every evening, the floors and tables are covered by the caretaker, who let us in with the use of a giant skeleton key. Very cool.

After the university we meandered along and stumbled across a wonderful street party\market where crafts people sold their wares and other people cooked up tasty treats, which we sampled. There was a DJ and giant cushions on the step on which to relax.

We visited so many churches, that i shall not name them all, but they were all beautiful. (At one we even saw people singing and taking communion.)

One thing that bears mentioning is that at the moment it is the Quiemba das Fitas, the festival that marks the end of the university year. There is the usual student revelry (drunkenness), but here the students also have a ritual in which they burn ribbons of the color that represents their faculty (red for law, yellow for medicine, etc). The students are everywhere dressed in formal costume: Long black capes, black suits and many also wear black hats. It is very dramatic, seeing groups of them walking to various parties with their capes flowing behind them.

It was a wonderful day. It is a bit cooler here than it has been in the past week or so, and it even rained a bit last night.
Today we shall explore a bit more and tomorrow we catch a train to Porto.
d & b

Wandering North

Tag: street art

Rainy Afternoon in Bogota

Mercado de Paloquemao

Hungry Vegetarian seeks Sustenance on Mountaintop

Bogota – first impressions

In and Out of Italy

Bats in the Bibliotheque