We had a good night's rest at the Confort Hotel 80 and got up early. Turns out when you're on the equator, it's pretty much light from 6am-6pm, year round.
We had breakfast in the sweet little dining room off the hotel lobby...and ordered in Spanish. Something that's taking some getting used to is that no one in Bogota speaks English. I mean no one, not even in the tourism industry. This is both refreshing and a little scary at the same time but Alexis and I have persevered and learned to communicate with our limited vocabulary, use of present tense verbs only, and lots of hand gestures. So ordering breakfast in Spanish was the least of our language hurdles for the day since the "breakfast chapter" is the first in every high school Spanish textbook. Huevos, cafe, and jugo, anyone?
After "desayuno," we made an ill-fated attempt to find the metro to travel to La Candelaria, the historic core of Bogota. We gave up and had the hotel call us a taxi (you are not supposed to hail them here).
La Candelaria includes many of Bogota's most important sites: churches, government buildings, museums, people feeding pigeons, etc. First stop, Museo de la Indepencia.
Apparently, el Museo highlights "the argument over a vase that spawned Colombia's quest for independence." Since there were no English subtitles, I'm going to have to trust the guidebook on this one. But the gardens were nice!
There was also an exhibit on modern day Colombia that we found perplexing. We were each handed wooden tokens when we entered the room, which turned out to be a shortcut to Colombia citizenship-- we got to use these tokens to VOTE! Since I know nothing about politics in Colombia, and I feared for my life if I chose the wrong party, I dropped my little guy into the most popular one, "Federalista." My other options were "Realista" and "Centralista." Fingers crossed...
Next stop, Museo del Oro, a tribute to pre-Colombian metallurgy. If you've seen one pre-Colombian gold breastplate, you've seen 'em all. Also, I forgot to take pictures.
Lunchtime (almuerzo) led us to Colombian platos typicos: sizzling meat.
Despues almuerzo, we went on a (Spanish speaking) walking tour. Catching every fourth word from our tour guide, combined with the sudden downpour, we cut it a wee bit short and headed home.
I'm proud to say that we made the 9 mile journey home via (cheap) public transportation! And we even had to switch lines! The buses were jam packed but it kinda made me homesick in a good way, like Metro after a Nats game, or when weekend trackwork means you get to snuggle up real close in someone's face.
This very sweet old man took a real liking to Alexis and insisted on giving her a candy from his pocket. Also, he said our Spanish was very good so we love him.
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