Day 2 in Bogota (January 2014)

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Day 2 in Bogota:

This morning we started out with two goals for the day: visit the Botero Museum here and have lunch at Fulanitos in La Candelaria. Unusually we accomplished both; usually we start the day with a plan and within an hour of commencing our day the plan has either changed or been abandoned to the improvisation of the moment.

Bogota’s Botero Museum is housed in a converted Spanish courtyard building and contains 208 paintings and sculptures donated by the artist, including 123 of his own and 85 by international masters such as Renoir, Monet, and Picasso. This museum was as enjoyable as our visit to the Botero Museum in Medellin and we remain enthralled and amused by his work. And we look for evidence of it in the people of Colombia as we people-watch on our walkabouts.

Lunch at Fulanito’s consisted of traditional Colombian fare). The restaurant is located on one of the ancient cobblestone streets and the terrace where we had our meal overlooked a church and view of a small part of the sprawling city. The restaurant defines itself as a ‘Vallecaucana Kitchen’ (Valle del Cauca is one of the 32 provinces of Colombia, located between the Andes mountain range and the Pacific Ocean) and my meal was labelled: Bandeja Villecaucana. It consisted of: red beans, shredded pork, sevilliano sausage, a type of blood sausage, avocado, plantain, topped with a fried egg and served on a plantain leaf. It was mostly very tasty.

Joan says that our experience of Colombian food so far is that it is pretty unsophisticated in general. It consists of beans and rice and small portions of the cheaper cuts of meat or chicken. What they most excel in, however, is wonderful fresh-squeezed juices from exotic fruits, which they tend to drink with all meals. The local beer is good. Wine is expensive and at the lower end of the grape vine.

After lunch we thought we might go to the Gold Museum but decided that one museum per day was our limit so we headed back toward our apartment in a roundabout fashion, heading toward 10^th Avenue. 10^th Avenue is a bit more colourful, grungy, lively and exotic than 7^th Avenue. There are no brand shops here. Approaching 10^th Avenue on 11^th Street, we passed one block of about 300 meters in which all the stores on one side of the street sold only hats and fedoras. And on the next block of 11^th Street, on both sides of the street were shops that sold only men’s suits. Around the corner and heading north on 10^th Avenue, you could buy everything else! There was a square filled with hawkers selling street food as well as bootleg dvds. There was one small building that contained schoolbook stores – more than a dozen of them. T-shirts and caps and padlocks and gloves and suitcases and backpacks and sneakers. I bought a pair of shower shoes in one store for less than the equivalent of 7 US Dollars and then a few minutes later saw about 10 other street hawkers offering the same shoes for less than 5 US Dollars. It pays here to shop around ... and around ... and around. You can get most things for half nothing!

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