17 de julio 2017
Mount Prospect, Illinois, United States
Hello everyone!
I have a few travel posts to catch up on (I'm so terrible at keeping up on this, sorry!) but many people have been asking about my school breaks this coming year (probably my last year?) so they can come visit.
If you can't come during one of the breaks, that's fine! I can meet up with you on the weekends and you can entertain yourself while I go to work.
For reference, Bucaramanga is approximately an hour flight to Bogotá, Medellin, Cartagena, and really anywhere else in Colombia (though depending on the city you'll likely have to fly through Bogotá anyway).
Without further ado, here's my work calendar. I've underlined the larger breaks.
August 8 - First day of work!
August 21 No School
October 7-16 October break, but I have meetings on October 9 and 10
November 6 No School
November 13 No School
December 8 No School
December 14 - January 8 Winter break; I'll be coming home for Christmas, dates TBA
March 19 No School
March 24 - April 1 Spring break
May 1 No School
May 14 No School
June 15 - Last day of work!
I hope you can make it down to visit me!
P.S. I have a new address, email me if you want it. I love mail! For packages, FedEx is best and probably takes a week. Letters/postcards take about a month.
Showing posts with label Visit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visit. Show all posts
Monday, July 17, 2017
Saturday, May 13, 2017
An Incredible Journey
13 de mayo 2017
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
Yes yes, I know, I'm terrible about keeping up with this blog. But I'm going to tell you a story of events that happened 5 months ago - my journey back to Colombia from Chicago after Christmas break.
It's a long and harrowing tale, involving standing in many lines and a lot of waiting time. Thankfully there is some frustrated attempt of wit through my live tweets of this trek. (See below!)
7 - 9 de enero 2017
Mount Prospect, Illinois, United States
O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois, United States
Newark Liberty Airport, Newark, New Jersey, United States
Wyndham Garden, Newark, New Jersey, United States
El Dorado Airport, Bogotá, DC, Colombia
Palonegro Airport, Lebrija, Santander, Colombia
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
What was originally supposed to be a 15-hour trip became a 43-hour odyssey. Here's my original schedule:
Here's what actually happened:
1. ORD-EWR:
It was quite exhausting and took me at least a week to recover. I later sat down and sent the following message to United (I maxed out the character limit):
On my journey from Chicago to Bucaramanga 7Jan2017 I encountered many misfortunes. The first plane UA330 was delayed an hour due to weather, but I still would've made my connection as I had a 2.5 hour layover initially. But, we spent an hour and a half stuck in the plane on the tarmac in Newark because there were not available gates and the plane in our gate was refueling. I sprinted 30 gates to my next plane, which was still sitting there, but there were no United employees in sight to let me in. UA1558 left the gate 45 minutes later-enough time for me to have gotten on the plane if they had not locked me out. I got in line at United customer service at 12:15am. The line was moving extremely slowly so I called United while continuing to wait in line. After listening to 40 minutes of "Your call is important to us. Your estimated wait time is 15-20 minutes," I finally got ahold of a representative. After telling me that the earliest possible flight I could get on was at 4:30pm the next day (16 hr layover in Newark), landing at 10:30pm and departing at 7:30am (9 hr layover in Bogota), he remained silent on the line for 30 minutes confirming my flight (I almost thought he'd hung up). He then connected me to luggage (another 30 minutes on hold), where they told me they THOUGHT my luggage was in Newark but really had no way of confirming that for sure, and that it would "probably" be checked through with my new tickets. I continued waiting in line until 5am (5 hours total) and received a hotel, but the Wyndham Gardens was not ready for that many surprise guests and I waited another hour to check in. Later that day I return to the airport and take flight UA1068 with no issues. When I arrive in Bogota, the United representative and her supervisor refuse to help me out due to policy, despite the note left on my record from the rep in Newark. I had to sleep in the Bogota airport through no fault of my own. I would like to receive recuperation for this harrowing 43 hr Odyssey.
As a response, they gave me a $200 travel credit. Here's the catch: if your flight involves planes that are not United (even if they are Star Alliance) it won't work. United doesn't fly to Bucaramanga. I've got a year to figure out how to use it.
Last but not least, in case you're interested and missed it the first time around, here's my Twitter tale of this venture:
Travel Nightmare - Jan 7-9, 2017
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
Yes yes, I know, I'm terrible about keeping up with this blog. But I'm going to tell you a story of events that happened 5 months ago - my journey back to Colombia from Chicago after Christmas break.
It's a long and harrowing tale, involving standing in many lines and a lot of waiting time. Thankfully there is some frustrated attempt of wit through my live tweets of this trek. (See below!)
7 - 9 de enero 2017
Mount Prospect, Illinois, United States
O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois, United States
Newark Liberty Airport, Newark, New Jersey, United States
Wyndham Garden, Newark, New Jersey, United States
El Dorado Airport, Bogotá, DC, Colombia
Palonegro Airport, Lebrija, Santander, Colombia
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
What was originally supposed to be a 15-hour trip became a 43-hour odyssey. Here's my original schedule:
- ORD-EWR: 7 Jan 6:10 pm CDT (GMT-6) - 7 Jan 9:22 pm EDT (GMT-5)
- EWR-BOG: 7 Jan 11:55 pm EDT (GMT-5) - 8 Jan 5:55 am COT (GMT-5)
- BOG-BGA: 8 Jan 9:45 am COT (GMT-5) - 8 Jan 10:51 am COT (GMT-5)
Here's what actually happened:
- ORD-EWR: 7 Jan 7:25 pm CDT (GMT-6) - 7 Jan 11:52 pm EDT (GMT-5)
- EWR-BOG: 8 Jan 3:59 pm EDT (GMT-5) - 8 Jan 10:34 am COT (GMT-5)
- BOG-BGA: 9 Jan 9:45 am COT (GMT-5) - 9 Jan 10:51 am COT (GMT-5)
Here's the full story:
1. ORD-EWR:
- Takeoff from ORD delayed an hour and fifteen minutes.
- Spent another hour and fifteen minutes on the tarmac at EWR.
- Pilot says we are waiting for our gate.
- Pilot says our gate is being changed.
- Pilot says our gate is back to the original.
- Pilot says we are waiting for another plane to finish refueling.
- FINALLY we get to the gate.
- It's just about midnight. I run to my next gate. It's bare. Not a single United employee or customer in sight. Plane's still there though, but I've got no way to get to it.
- I get in (a very long) line for United customer service. One girl tells the rest of the line that she just called United and got helped a lot quicker. I call while waiting in line.
- I get a notification around 1:45 am that my plane JUST TOOK OFF from Newark. Needless to say I'm pissed that there were no staff at the gate.
- Though I was told by the hold track several times that my call was important to them and would be answered in the order it was received and that it would be approximately 15-20 minutes, my call gets picked up in about 40 minutes. I've hardly progressed through the physical customer service line.
- The man on the phone schedules me on the next available flight: EWR-BOG: 8 Jan 3:59 pm EDT (GMT-5) - 8 Jan 10:34 pm COT (GMT-5), BOG-BGA: 9 Jan 8:45 am COT (GMT-5) - 9 Jan 9:51 am COT (GMT-5).
- This means 16 more hours in Newark and 9 hours in Bogota. This means arriving home 22 hours after my original plan.
- The customer service rep takes about 30 minutes to schedule this and leaves me on the (mostly silent) line.
- I learn that hotel vouchers can only be given in person, and travel vouchers can only be given by complaining online.
- He transfers me to luggage services to see where my suitcases are. After 30 minutes, they pick up the phone and tell me they have no way of knowing exactly where my luggage is, but that it should follow me. I can't retrieve it until Bucaramanga.
- After waiting in line for over 4 hours, I get to the desk, where I'm given a hotel for the...morning? It's about 4 am. The rep can't promise a hotel in Bogotá but says she'll write a note on my file. She sends me on my way with a hotel voucher, three $10 food vouchers, a toiletry kit, and a bottle of water.
- Took the airport train to the hotel shuttle pickup point and wait almost an hour for my bus.
- The bus is full of British people for unknown reasons. Half of the Brits are left behind because the bus isn't big enough for all of us.
- Get to the hotel and wait almost an hour to be assigned a room. Spend one of my vouchers at the hotel cafe on a banana, muffin, and bottle of water.
- Get to my room about 6 am. I look in my carry-on and find no change of clothes, just weird stuff that wouldn't fit in my suitcase but is not useful to me now.
- Sleep for about 7 hours. Find out the banana is definitely not ripe and definitely not edible.
- Take the shuttle back to the airport. Throw out the two full bottles of water I didn't have time to drink.
2. EWR-BOG:
- Get on the plane, stow my carry-on, and find my seat.
- A flight attendant comes to me, hands me a boarding pass with my name on it, and says, "Ms. Roznai? Please occupy this seat."
- It's business class!
- There's no one next to me, or occupying either seat across the aisle.
- I get to order a complementary alcoholic drink?!
- Oh, I had to scarf it down before takeoff? Bye mostly-full Jack & Coke.
- Cool, I don't have to pay to watch TV in business class!
- First I watched the Golden Globes until we lost the US signal somewhere at the end of Florida, then I watched Miss Peregrin's Home for Peculiar Children. It was an enjoyable film.
- Flight lands in Bogotá and luckily there's no line at immigration. I take the bus to my terminal and ask the Avianca desk about a hotel voucher. They can't do anything since it was booked through United, so they direct me back to the main terminal to find the United desk.
- I walk past customer service desks for every airline except United. I ask around and am directed to the single United ticket counter.
- I tell my story to the United worker, she looks up my reservation, and says she cannot give me a voucher because it is against United Airlines policy to give vouchers for weather delays.
- I argue that it was not entirely a weather delay, that the gates at EWR were full of other planes so we could not occupy a gate. She argues that those planes were occupying those gates because of weather. She calls over her manager who repeats the same company line.
- I ask about the note written by the representative in New Jersey. She says the note says, "If possible" and that it was not possible. She says if she were to have written the note she would not have used that language. She would have been more direct and written that it was "required."
- I tell her it's ridiculous that it comes down to passive voice like that. She doesn't bat an eye.
- Through sobs of despair and desperation, I ask if there are cots somewhere. She tells me "There are some chairs over there."
- After crying in the bathroom for a bit, then buying a few souvenirs (including some dinosaur stickers 'cause treat yo'self), and buying some dinner, I find a plot of floor to call my own for the next 6 hours.
3. BOG-BGA
- I head to check in to my flight and am redirected to the other terminal. I find a bus that takes me there.
- I check in and find my fellow teacher Andrea, and we wait together for our flight.
- Our flight ends up being delayed an hour.
- We finally start boarding, and I am thrilled to discover that I'm in a row all by myself. In fact, I am the only person sitting in the entire 12-person exit-row section. The flight attendant is concerned that I can't handle the responsibility and offers to relocate me. I stay.
- I raise the armrests and lay down for a nap, waking up only for my complimentary Avianca juice box.
- I arrive at the airport and my luggage does too!
- Andrea and I wait 20 minutes for my scheduled cab to arrive.
- Finally I make it home and collapse on my bed.
It was quite exhausting and took me at least a week to recover. I later sat down and sent the following message to United (I maxed out the character limit):
On my journey from Chicago to Bucaramanga 7Jan2017 I encountered many misfortunes. The first plane UA330 was delayed an hour due to weather, but I still would've made my connection as I had a 2.5 hour layover initially. But, we spent an hour and a half stuck in the plane on the tarmac in Newark because there were not available gates and the plane in our gate was refueling. I sprinted 30 gates to my next plane, which was still sitting there, but there were no United employees in sight to let me in. UA1558 left the gate 45 minutes later-enough time for me to have gotten on the plane if they had not locked me out. I got in line at United customer service at 12:15am. The line was moving extremely slowly so I called United while continuing to wait in line. After listening to 40 minutes of "Your call is important to us. Your estimated wait time is 15-20 minutes," I finally got ahold of a representative. After telling me that the earliest possible flight I could get on was at 4:30pm the next day (16 hr layover in Newark), landing at 10:30pm and departing at 7:30am (9 hr layover in Bogota), he remained silent on the line for 30 minutes confirming my flight (I almost thought he'd hung up). He then connected me to luggage (another 30 minutes on hold), where they told me they THOUGHT my luggage was in Newark but really had no way of confirming that for sure, and that it would "probably" be checked through with my new tickets. I continued waiting in line until 5am (5 hours total) and received a hotel, but the Wyndham Gardens was not ready for that many surprise guests and I waited another hour to check in. Later that day I return to the airport and take flight UA1068 with no issues. When I arrive in Bogota, the United representative and her supervisor refuse to help me out due to policy, despite the note left on my record from the rep in Newark. I had to sleep in the Bogota airport through no fault of my own. I would like to receive recuperation for this harrowing 43 hr Odyssey.
As a response, they gave me a $200 travel credit. Here's the catch: if your flight involves planes that are not United (even if they are Star Alliance) it won't work. United doesn't fly to Bucaramanga. I've got a year to figure out how to use it.
Last but not least, in case you're interested and missed it the first time around, here's my Twitter tale of this venture:
Travel Nightmare - Jan 7-9, 2017
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Marvelous Mountainous Medellin
28 de enero 2017
Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia writing about Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
This might be a new record for late posts. Over two months ago, from 11 de noviembre 2016 to 14 de noviembre 2016, I went on a trip to Medellin with Kelsey, Andrea, and Kismeth.
11 de noviembre
Bucaramanga, Santander and Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
Luckily for me (and everyone else), I wasn't sick for this trip! We had an evening flight, pretty uneventful, and took quite a long cab ride to where we were staying: The Black Sheep Hostel. The hostel was pretty nice - we had a private 4-bed room (2nd weekend in a row I slept on the bottom of a bunk bed!), shared bathroom with the room next door, common spaces (with lots of hammocks!), and drinks (including beer) and snacks you could get from the front desk and have added onto your tab. They also had a bunch of activities, but the ones we were interested in filled up too quickly. The neighborhood we stayed in was El Poblado, which was close to the metro and a short walk to all the nightlife.
That first night after we arrived and freshened up, we decided we didn't want to waste any time and we headed out to Parque Lleras, the home of Zona Rosa, hub of the Medellin nightlife. We wandered about and took in the scenery (lots of street art!) and hopped into and out of a few bars. We even found a bar that played American club music (rap, hip hop, etc), and we payed a cover to get in and everything, but it turned out to be packed full of high schoolers and felt like a school dance, so we got our free shot included in the cover and left.
As we were walking around, we found a place that served FALAFEL! It was so exciting. Bucaramanga doesn't really have food from most of anywhere else in the world, and it had been quite a while (probably since June or July) since I had eaten Middle-Eastern food. Falafel Time was Subway-style, where you got to choose what to add on your sandwich, and damn was it good.
Towards the end of our night we found a pretty cool discoteca called La Ruana de Juana, finally the atmosphere we were looking for. We had some fun dancing, until this waiter started practically chasing us around the club because we hadn't bought any drinks. After a while of dancing and dodging, we made our way back to our hostel to sleep.
12 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
On Saturday, we woke up and headed to Al Alma Café for brunch. Brunch! Brunch is such an American thing and so not a Colombian thing. It was SO GOOD. I got an eggs benedict, which was tasty, but the real star of the show was Kismeth's french toast.
The food and the coffee was beyond good. Once we finished stuffing ourselves with brunchy goodness, we headed over to the metro stop. Medellin is the only city in Colombia with a train system, and they are very proud of it and take excellent care of it. We got yelled at and almost thrown off the train platform for eating a bag of chips. This was probably the cleanest public transportation I have ever been on. The train was spotless and looked brand new.
The coolest thing about the metro to me was that they had a teleférico (cable car) as part of their daily commuter system! Medellin is in the mountains, and cable cars just make much more sense to ascend a mountain. We took the train to the cable car and rode it up as far as it went.
When we got to the end of the line, we paid an extra fare to take another cable car even further - up to Parque Arvi. We had heard from our coworkers Ryan and Kate that there was a cool park if you rode the cable cars all the way to the top. We were dressed cute in sandals and sundresses for a nice day at the park.
Joke's on us.
It's a national park. With hiking and horses and zip-lining and lots of cool stuff that you should be dressed differently for. Oh, and it's raining. We were so not prepared.
Parque Arvi seemed really neat though, just know what you're getting into. There's several parks within the main park, and each has TONS of outdoorsy activities. I'd like to go back with hiking boots and pants and a jacket. (It's pretty chilly up at the top of the mountain.) We walked around a bit, and then explored a little craft/farmer's market, shopping and snacking.
After we had our fill, we headed back down the mountain, admiring the view and laughing at our misfortunes. And what a view it was! Everything looks so beautiful from up there.
I've never really been in such a mountainous city before, so the concept was pretty fascinating to me. From below, the city just looked like stacks on stacks on stacks of buildings.
We took the metro back to our hostel, where we freshened up and rested a bit before our next adventure. Kismeth had made a friend on another trip she had made a few weeks prior - a Canadian that teaches Physics in Medellin. Sam invited us over for dinner, and we made some pasta and garlic bread (though it turned out his oven didn't work and he had never noticed, so we had to improvise on the stove top). We had some pretty deep conversations about philosophy and politics and more over our dinner and wine. He was a pretty cool dude.
After dinner we headed back to Parque Lleras to meet up some of Sam's friends at a club, but Andrea and I didn't feel like paying cover to party that night, so the two of us slowly meandered back to the hostel and chilled in the hammocks on the roof. We were originally going to try to make some hostel friends and play a game or something, but no one was really around, so we just chatted about life, our journey to/in Colombia so far, and our lives back home. Andrea asks some hard-hitting heavy-thinking questions, which leads to some really deep conversations. It was a really nice evening.
13 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
On Sunday, we decided to try and do some research after our mishap yesterday. I looked at Trip Advisor at where we should eat and what we should do. We decided D'Andre Gourmet sounded pretty tasty, so we headed up that way. Unfortunately, we walked all the way there to find that it was closed. Trip Advisor did not warn us of this. We were near Parque Lleras, so we decided to amble around and find somewhere to eat.
We found a place that seemed cool, and we were hungry, and they advertised Mimosa Party, so we had a seat at Botanika Lounge. The waitress initially told us that if we ordered an entree, we received unlimited mimosas, so we got super excited. Then another waitress told us that was incorrect, and told us the actual price of the unlimited mimosas, and we decided to just have coffee instead. It was an interesting place.
After we were nearly done eating, the waitress brought us a round ofggggy mimosas on the house and apologized for the earlier confusion. They were damn good, and if we had ordered the unlimited mimosas after all, we probably would not have gotten much done that day.
After brunch, we grabbed a taxi to the center of the city. We had seen some of it from the train the previous day and there were some cool-looking things we wanted to check out.
We walked out into a big square and were about to choose a street to walk down and observe, when a HUGE crack of thunder struck out right above us and the heavens opened up in a downpour. We ran back underneath the roof of the expressway where all the street vendors were hiding their wares from the rain. We looked at some of their wares, and I haggled a man selling Colombian jerseys down to $30.000 from $50.000, but then I remembered I was out of cash (plus I realized the jersey had buttons and I didn't like the buttons). Still felt accomplished.
When the rain died down to more of a drizzle, we hazarded out and took some photos of the Palacio de la Cultura and the sculptures in the Botero Plaza on our way to the Museo de Antioquia.
When we got to the museum, we found that there was a special price if you were part of a group. Unfortunately, you needed more than 5 people to qualify and we were only 4. So, we grabbed a few lone rangers to make our "group" and everyone came out happy. One of our new group members stuck with us to tour the museum. He was a German named Joshy who was volunteering for a year at a finca an hour or two out of Medellin that took in underprivileged youths and helped them to develop skills and get on their feet to become productive young members of society. He was pretty cool.
The main attraction at the museum was the Fernando Botero exhibit. Botero is best known for his voluptuous figures in his paintings and sculptures. We learned from the exhibit that his uncle enrolled him in bullfighting school at 12 years old, and though he didn't end up pursuing bullfighting as a career, the environment inspired his first works of art. He traveled to Europe and studied the Italian and Spanish masters, especially the Renaissance painters. The Abstract Expressionists of New York taught him his loose, visible brushstrokes. He donated many of his works to the museum of his hometown, Medellin. I was surprised to learn that he is still alive, as I usually think of famous painters as being long dead from centuries ago (which I know is usually not the case; I had the same kind of realization when I realized Picasso only died not too long ago).
Botero's got a very particular style, and though he's got a bunch of historical figures in his paintings (Jesus, Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Escobar), he's also got a lot of weird risque figures as well. The one thing they all have in common is that they are very round (but not fat, Botero claims that his figures are simply voluminous, not fat).
After the Botero exhibit, we wandered around a few of the other exhibits until the museum closed. There was some interesting stuff, mostly pretty modern. We also had a nice view of the plaza below.
After the museum closed and kicked us out, we looked again on Trip Advisor to find something to do that was open on a Sunday afternoon/evening. We found El Pueblito Paisa, which we remembered Sam mentioning the night before, so we decided to grab a cab and head over. Pueblito Paisa is a fake little town in the style of an old Spanish settlement in Antioquia at the turn of the century. Think Renaissance Faire. It's touristy and kitschy, but I like that kind of stuff. We had heard it has a great panoramic view of the city, and we wanted to have a good view of our last Medellin sunset.
In addition to the kitschy little town, they also had a craft market there! We looked around at all the booths and got a few cool little things. I got a pendant for my mom and a necklace for myself from a woman who made things out of watch fixings. My mom's pendant has a cat made of watch gears. It's super cute.
All weekend Kismeth had been wanting to try the traditional Antioquian dish Bandeja Paisa, and she finally got to at the Pueblito! Bandeja means plate or platter, and Paisa is someone from the region Medellin is a part of. This dish is full of comfort food from the region - rice, beans, chorizo, chicharron, egg, avocado, arepa, ground meat, blood sausage, and plantain, all sharing the plate together. It was so much food and looked good, but I wasn't hungry enough to order my own. I did have a bite though, and it was yummy!
To end our last day in Medellin, we wanted to get some food we couldn't get in Bucaramanga, so we traveled over to an Indian/Middle Eastern restaurant, Tabun. The food there was so tasty, and no matter what you order, you are treated to an appetizer spread of naan with several dips and salads. We stuffed ourselves full!
We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant, and on our way home decided to pop in to get something else we couldn't easily get in Bucaramanga - good craft beer. We sat down at Bogota Beer Company for a drink, and we got really excited at the selection of fancy craft beers! (In Bucaramanga, you have your choice of Aguila Light, Poker, or if you want to kick it up a notch, Club Colombia in types of dorada, roja, or negra. As comparison, Aguila Light and Poker are like your Bud Lites, and Club Colombia is probably equivalent to Miller.)
We read the whole menu and picked out our tasty treats, only to hear from the waiter that they were out of most of the choices. We selected our beers from the few that they actually had in stock, and were still pretty happy! I may have snuck out with a glass...that Lulo pushed off a table and broke a week or two later.
We headed home for a few hours of nap at our hostel, full of food, beer, and memories. We then woke up as many were just getting home from the bars to take the long cab ride back to the airport to catch our out-before-the-sun flight home to Bucaramanga.
Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia writing about Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
This might be a new record for late posts. Over two months ago, from 11 de noviembre 2016 to 14 de noviembre 2016, I went on a trip to Medellin with Kelsey, Andrea, and Kismeth.
11 de noviembre
Bucaramanga, Santander and Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
Luckily for me (and everyone else), I wasn't sick for this trip! We had an evening flight, pretty uneventful, and took quite a long cab ride to where we were staying: The Black Sheep Hostel. The hostel was pretty nice - we had a private 4-bed room (2nd weekend in a row I slept on the bottom of a bunk bed!), shared bathroom with the room next door, common spaces (with lots of hammocks!), and drinks (including beer) and snacks you could get from the front desk and have added onto your tab. They also had a bunch of activities, but the ones we were interested in filled up too quickly. The neighborhood we stayed in was El Poblado, which was close to the metro and a short walk to all the nightlife.
 |
| Plus they had a HUGE bunch of fresh bananas you could pick and snack on whenever you wanted! |
That first night after we arrived and freshened up, we decided we didn't want to waste any time and we headed out to Parque Lleras, the home of Zona Rosa, hub of the Medellin nightlife. We wandered about and took in the scenery (lots of street art!) and hopped into and out of a few bars. We even found a bar that played American club music (rap, hip hop, etc), and we payed a cover to get in and everything, but it turned out to be packed full of high schoolers and felt like a school dance, so we got our free shot included in the cover and left.
 |
| Such a cool atmosphere! |
As we were walking around, we found a place that served FALAFEL! It was so exciting. Bucaramanga doesn't really have food from most of anywhere else in the world, and it had been quite a while (probably since June or July) since I had eaten Middle-Eastern food. Falafel Time was Subway-style, where you got to choose what to add on your sandwich, and damn was it good.
 |
| Just look at it. Doesn't it make your mouth water? |
Towards the end of our night we found a pretty cool discoteca called La Ruana de Juana, finally the atmosphere we were looking for. We had some fun dancing, until this waiter started practically chasing us around the club because we hadn't bought any drinks. After a while of dancing and dodging, we made our way back to our hostel to sleep.
12 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
On Saturday, we woke up and headed to Al Alma Café for brunch. Brunch! Brunch is such an American thing and so not a Colombian thing. It was SO GOOD. I got an eggs benedict, which was tasty, but the real star of the show was Kismeth's french toast.
 |
| Yum |
 |
| Heavenly. |
 |
| Medellin Metro Map. Our hostel was near the Poblado stop. |
The coolest thing about the metro to me was that they had a teleférico (cable car) as part of their daily commuter system! Medellin is in the mountains, and cable cars just make much more sense to ascend a mountain. We took the train to the cable car and rode it up as far as it went.
Public transportation at its finest.
Joke's on us.
It's a national park. With hiking and horses and zip-lining and lots of cool stuff that you should be dressed differently for. Oh, and it's raining. We were so not prepared.
 |
| We should've done some research! |
Parque Arvi seemed really neat though, just know what you're getting into. There's several parks within the main park, and each has TONS of outdoorsy activities. I'd like to go back with hiking boots and pants and a jacket. (It's pretty chilly up at the top of the mountain.) We walked around a bit, and then explored a little craft/farmer's market, shopping and snacking.
 |
| Oh deer. |
After we had our fill, we headed back down the mountain, admiring the view and laughing at our misfortunes. And what a view it was! Everything looks so beautiful from up there.
 |
| Far o'er the misty mountains cold... |
I've never really been in such a mountainous city before, so the concept was pretty fascinating to me. From below, the city just looked like stacks on stacks on stacks of buildings.
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| So many! |
We took the metro back to our hostel, where we freshened up and rested a bit before our next adventure. Kismeth had made a friend on another trip she had made a few weeks prior - a Canadian that teaches Physics in Medellin. Sam invited us over for dinner, and we made some pasta and garlic bread (though it turned out his oven didn't work and he had never noticed, so we had to improvise on the stove top). We had some pretty deep conversations about philosophy and politics and more over our dinner and wine. He was a pretty cool dude.
After dinner we headed back to Parque Lleras to meet up some of Sam's friends at a club, but Andrea and I didn't feel like paying cover to party that night, so the two of us slowly meandered back to the hostel and chilled in the hammocks on the roof. We were originally going to try to make some hostel friends and play a game or something, but no one was really around, so we just chatted about life, our journey to/in Colombia so far, and our lives back home. Andrea asks some hard-hitting heavy-thinking questions, which leads to some really deep conversations. It was a really nice evening.
13 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
On Sunday, we decided to try and do some research after our mishap yesterday. I looked at Trip Advisor at where we should eat and what we should do. We decided D'Andre Gourmet sounded pretty tasty, so we headed up that way. Unfortunately, we walked all the way there to find that it was closed. Trip Advisor did not warn us of this. We were near Parque Lleras, so we decided to amble around and find somewhere to eat.
We found a place that seemed cool, and we were hungry, and they advertised Mimosa Party, so we had a seat at Botanika Lounge. The waitress initially told us that if we ordered an entree, we received unlimited mimosas, so we got super excited. Then another waitress told us that was incorrect, and told us the actual price of the unlimited mimosas, and we decided to just have coffee instead. It was an interesting place.
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| I ordered the ginger hash browns. They were extremely gingery. |
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| Kelsey's eggs had a bunch of flowers on them. |
After we were nearly done eating, the waitress brought us a round ofggggy mimosas on the house and apologized for the earlier confusion. They were damn good, and if we had ordered the unlimited mimosas after all, we probably would not have gotten much done that day.
After brunch, we grabbed a taxi to the center of the city. We had seen some of it from the train the previous day and there were some cool-looking things we wanted to check out.
We walked out into a big square and were about to choose a street to walk down and observe, when a HUGE crack of thunder struck out right above us and the heavens opened up in a downpour. We ran back underneath the roof of the expressway where all the street vendors were hiding their wares from the rain. We looked at some of their wares, and I haggled a man selling Colombian jerseys down to $30.000 from $50.000, but then I remembered I was out of cash (plus I realized the jersey had buttons and I didn't like the buttons). Still felt accomplished.
When the rain died down to more of a drizzle, we hazarded out and took some photos of the Palacio de la Cultura and the sculptures in the Botero Plaza on our way to the Museo de Antioquia.
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| What a gorgeous building. We didn't get to go inside, but I'd like to someday. |
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| Butts. |
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| Guardian cat to the museum. |
When we got to the museum, we found that there was a special price if you were part of a group. Unfortunately, you needed more than 5 people to qualify and we were only 4. So, we grabbed a few lone rangers to make our "group" and everyone came out happy. One of our new group members stuck with us to tour the museum. He was a German named Joshy who was volunteering for a year at a finca an hour or two out of Medellin that took in underprivileged youths and helped them to develop skills and get on their feet to become productive young members of society. He was pretty cool.
The main attraction at the museum was the Fernando Botero exhibit. Botero is best known for his voluptuous figures in his paintings and sculptures. We learned from the exhibit that his uncle enrolled him in bullfighting school at 12 years old, and though he didn't end up pursuing bullfighting as a career, the environment inspired his first works of art. He traveled to Europe and studied the Italian and Spanish masters, especially the Renaissance painters. The Abstract Expressionists of New York taught him his loose, visible brushstrokes. He donated many of his works to the museum of his hometown, Medellin. I was surprised to learn that he is still alive, as I usually think of famous painters as being long dead from centuries ago (which I know is usually not the case; I had the same kind of realization when I realized Picasso only died not too long ago).
Botero's got a very particular style, and though he's got a bunch of historical figures in his paintings (Jesus, Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Escobar), he's also got a lot of weird risque figures as well. The one thing they all have in common is that they are very round (but not fat, Botero claims that his figures are simply voluminous, not fat).
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| Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, in all their voluminous glory |
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| This picture has so much going on. I'm not even sure what's exactly happening here. |
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| Even his still life is voluminous |
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| The Death of Pablo Escobar, 1999 |
After the Botero exhibit, we wandered around a few of the other exhibits until the museum closed. There was some interesting stuff, mostly pretty modern. We also had a nice view of the plaza below.
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| Hey, it stopped raining! |
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| A study of Botero's hand |
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| This was one of my favorites in the whole museum |
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| Ain't that the truth! |
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| What a fascinating collage of the baby Jesus. |
After the museum closed and kicked us out, we looked again on Trip Advisor to find something to do that was open on a Sunday afternoon/evening. We found El Pueblito Paisa, which we remembered Sam mentioning the night before, so we decided to grab a cab and head over. Pueblito Paisa is a fake little town in the style of an old Spanish settlement in Antioquia at the turn of the century. Think Renaissance Faire. It's touristy and kitschy, but I like that kind of stuff. We had heard it has a great panoramic view of the city, and we wanted to have a good view of our last Medellin sunset.
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| "The Little Town" |
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| Marvelous Mountainous Medellin! |
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| Night view of the market and the Pueblito |
All weekend Kismeth had been wanting to try the traditional Antioquian dish Bandeja Paisa, and she finally got to at the Pueblito! Bandeja means plate or platter, and Paisa is someone from the region Medellin is a part of. This dish is full of comfort food from the region - rice, beans, chorizo, chicharron, egg, avocado, arepa, ground meat, blood sausage, and plantain, all sharing the plate together. It was so much food and looked good, but I wasn't hungry enough to order my own. I did have a bite though, and it was yummy!
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| Bandeja Paisa |
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| We didn't find the big 360° panorama mirador for our sunset, but we did find it after the sun went down. |
To end our last day in Medellin, we wanted to get some food we couldn't get in Bucaramanga, so we traveled over to an Indian/Middle Eastern restaurant, Tabun. The food there was so tasty, and no matter what you order, you are treated to an appetizer spread of naan with several dips and salads. We stuffed ourselves full!
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| Dayum. |
We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant, and on our way home decided to pop in to get something else we couldn't easily get in Bucaramanga - good craft beer. We sat down at Bogota Beer Company for a drink, and we got really excited at the selection of fancy craft beers! (In Bucaramanga, you have your choice of Aguila Light, Poker, or if you want to kick it up a notch, Club Colombia in types of dorada, roja, or negra. As comparison, Aguila Light and Poker are like your Bud Lites, and Club Colombia is probably equivalent to Miller.)
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| LOOK AT ALL THESE CHOICES |
We read the whole menu and picked out our tasty treats, only to hear from the waiter that they were out of most of the choices. We selected our beers from the few that they actually had in stock, and were still pretty happy! I may have snuck out with a glass...that Lulo pushed off a table and broke a week or two later.
We headed home for a few hours of nap at our hostel, full of food, beer, and memories. We then woke up as many were just getting home from the bars to take the long cab ride back to the airport to catch our out-before-the-sun flight home to Bucaramanga.
Monday, October 17, 2016
2,562 Mile Romance
17 de octubre 2016
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
This past week was October Recess - a full 10 days sans students (with 2 professional development days interrupting the middle of the week) - and my fantastic boyfriend Noah came to visit! He was supposed to arrive late Friday night (7 de octubre), so I stayed up past my bedtime (I've been going to bed recently around 9 or 10 pm...one of the fine benefits of having to be at school at 6:30 am) to wait for the taxi to pick him up from the airport. I was sleepy yet excited!
However, it turns out he missed his connection in Bogotá (not an uncommon experience) and the next flight wasn't until 6 am the following morning. So, after chatting with him (until his phone died... Bogotá has got to get some outlets!) and making sure he had a safe place to sleep and a ticket for the morning flight, I re-ordered the taxi and went to sleep for a few hours.
Thankfully, he and the luggage all made it safely the next morning (8 de octubre)! The taxi drove me there, waited for us, and drove us back, all for $50,000 pesos (let me know if you want his number, he's very reliable)!
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| Made it safe and sound! We're both more than a little bit sleep-deprived, but so happy! |
Later in the afternoon, after a day of napping and otherwise chilling, we headed out to find Jesus. Or is that Jesús? In any case, we took a taxi out to El Santísimo, the tallest statue of Jesus in Colombia, and depending on whether or not you count the height of the base, possibly the tallest statue of Jesus in the world (yes, taller than Christ the Redeemer). El Santísimo is 33 m tall, 37 if you count the base. Christ the Redeemer is 30 m tall, 38 if you count the base. (Noah doesn't think the base should count.)
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| We took the teleférico up the mountain - Noah felt like we were entering Jurassic Park. |
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| This guy? |
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| I hope I'm not acting holier-than-thou. |
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| Not the way to heaven. |
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| Hey everybody! |
After our descent, we caught a light show projected onto a fountain, which was actually pretty cool! They synced up the music with the movements of the water and the colors and the images and it was just fantastic!
Not my video, but the only videos I took were less than 10 second Snapchats.
You'll just have to come see it for yourself!
We ate dinner at a restaurant with a clear view of the Holy Armpit, and got to watch the light show a second time while we ate. We then made our way back down the teleférico and back home to get a good night's sleep.
9 de octubre
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
The next day, we decided to walk around Floridablanca, in an area I'd been meaning to explore but hadn't yet had the chance. We stumbled into a dimly-lit small-aisled market, with people selling everything from candles to fruit to meat to tools. One vendor had an entire pig skin hanging out to dry. After holding our noses for a while (all that raw meat doesn't smell great), we walked back out and continued our explorations. We eventually ended up finding the Botanical Gardens (Jardin Botánico Eloy Valenzuela). I had heard great things, so we went in!
There were of course many beautiful plants, but perhaps the most exciting thing (to me) was the wildlife! They had an aviary FULL of beautiful parrots, a pond full of ducks, and of course TURTLES wandering everywhere free-range.
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| WHAAAT. Check out this dude. |
After the botanical gardens, we went in search of Obleas, a traditional Santandarean snack that is essentially a wafer sandwich. Traditionally, obleas are just filled with arequipe, a caramelly-dulce-de-leche sort of thing. I ordered the Amor a Mil, which is filled with arequipe, cheese, guanabana, and strawberries. It was tasty but didn't stay together well, so I ended up eating most of the fillings with a spoon. Noah got the Amor de Tres, which is filled with arequipe, cream, and pear. He really enjoyed it. We then stumbled upon a town square with a market going on, where many people tried to get us to buy more obleas, ice cream, bracelets, or photos. We declined and headed on home, quite pooped from our adventures.
10 de octubre
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
Unfortuantely I had to go to work on Monday, but afterwards Noah and I had a bunch of people over for dinner (homemade tacos!) and board games (thanks for sending me stuff Mom and Dad!). Everyone had a great time and really enjoyed the tacos. We finally got some spicy in our system! (Spice is not very common here.) After eating and chatting and vying for the cat's affection, we played a couple rounds of Sushi Go Party and Cards Against Humanity, and (to my knowledge anyway) everyone had a grand ol' time.
11 de octubre
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
I had to go to work again on Tuesday, so Noah was left alone for much of the day once more. Luckily, he became fast friends with Lulo and she enjoyed napping on him. After work, Colombia was playing Uruguay, so Noah and I joined a few of the other teachers at a bar to watch the game. We were told to meet at Saxo Pub (an Irish pub, I think), but it turns out Saxo was gone and Das Leben (a German pub) had taken its place. So we were quite the worldly group I suppose. It was a pretty exciting game, and the two teams ended up tying (empate).
12 de octubre
Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia
On Wednesday, we decided to adventure to downtown Bucaramanga and see what there is to see. We walked around El Centro and bought some fruit from the market, and dodged all the people that were jumping out to try to get us to buy whatever they were hawking. We saw a guy blowing glass on the street and watched him make a swan, which was pretty cool (and only $5,000!).
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| You don't see that every day. |
We checked out the painted hormigas, and Noah had his first Colombian hotdog! ...He wasn't impressed and it may have also been his last Colombian hotdog. Luckily, we also found a place with empanadas and big ol' fried potato balls full of stuff (Papas Rellenas), so the night ended on a good note.
13 de octubre
Floridablanca, Santander, Colombia
Thursday was Noah's last full day in Colombia, so we spent it mostly eating empanadas and doing other very Colombian experiences - drinking fresh juice, buying coffee and aguardiente, and drinking water out of a bag.
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| Not as easy as I make it seem. |
Many things here are served in bags - water, milk, ketchup, jelly, mayonnaise...you name it. More environmentally friendly! We also tried the Colombian soda Pony Malta, which it turns out is disgusting (to my students who may be reading this, Noah says Dr Pepper is WAY better. I don't even like Dr Pepper and it's way better than Pony Malta).
We had gotten word that a chiva trip was in the works, so we headed back down to Bucaramanga with a bag full of beer to make Noah's last night a great one. There were only 11 of us, but we still had a BLAST!
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| We're adorable. |
14 de octubre
Palonegro International Airport, Lebrija, Santander, Colombia
We woke up before the sun to catch the taxi to the airport for Noah's early-morning flight. He was able to get in one last empanada at the airport, though, being airport food, it wasn't the greatest. We had a mild freak-out when the departures board turned from en sala (turns out that means it's boarding time!) to cerrado while we were eating, but luckily all was okay at Bucaramanga's tiny airport and Noah made it on the plane and safely through all his connections.
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