I woke up at 6:30am and worked on some planning for the travel day, made coffees and wrote in my book. Jives woke up at 8:30 and had a coffee with me. We then made breakfast with the eggs we bought at the market. We had scrambled eggs with delicious corn chips, melted cheese on toast with tomato and coffees. It was actually a pretty good spread!

We then walked down to Marty station ( a little bit in the sketchy area) to top up our metro cards. This is super easy to do at a kiosk, but only the bus metro stations have the kiosks. You can even set the machine to English. If you don’t have a Tullava card you can even buy one at the machine as we did the first day. You can enter whatever cash you want to add to your card (but don’t expect change), and the machine tops up the balance. You can check your balance on the metro app, which I really do recommend you download (even though the app is super flawed). When I travel I never get data or a sim card, but on this trip I think it was 100% necessary. The buses are so confusing and if you go the wrong way, the results can be really severe, so I say get a cheap sim if you can. 

We then wandered through the old district towards the Botero museum, so it looked like it was about to rain. We looked at the outside of a few interesting churches I had pinned, but they all seemed closed (it was Monday). 

We then got trapped under a little protruding window ledge as the rain came down hard. Our shoes and pants got soaked. As we travel very lightly, this was a bit problematic. The rain let up a bit after, about 15-20 minutes. We made a run for the Botero museum, through streets that had become waterfalls. We only had about a two minute jaunt to the safety of the dry Botero museum. Fernando Botero was a Colombian painter and sculptor known for his depictions of figures in a ballooned fashion. The museum was free and definitely worth a visit! Among the Botero originals you will also find Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali and many more. It was fun showing Jives his first Monet etc., as he had never really been to an art museum. I can’t believe he has never been, as I’ve been to so many as an Art Major. 

We spent about an hour at the museum and then walked towards Plaza Del Chorro de Quevedo, a small but beautiful plaza near the street art street (all of the old town seems to be full of street art, but Cl.Del Embudo is even more full). The plaza has a lovely small white church, many cafes with outdoor seating and the remainder of an old wall that was painted a vibrant pink colour. 

We then wandered down Cl. Del Embudo, photographing the street art and looking at all the cafes and bars. We then walked to a restaurant called “Origen Bistro” which was in a lovely old building. We sat out in the courtyard. I ordered a veggie bowl with tomato chutney, broccoli, zucchini and Jives got a very traditional soup called “Ajiaco Santafereno” which is made of local potatoes and beans and comes with a side of avocado, rice and capers. It was delicious! 

We then headed back to the old town square as the sun decided to come out. At Plaza du Bolivar we spotted a cart selling what looked like mulled wine, minus the wine and plus tequila. I ordered one of these boozy concoctions and the man told me to taste it. He then added even more tequila from a different mystery bottle and added additional lime. It was so delicious. He offered to add more tequila, but it was already a lot of tequila…so I declined. We sat on the church steps and enjoyed our donkey cart booze. 

We then made our way back to the metro stop and on to our accommodation. We had an early flight the next morning, so we checked into our flight and packed up our stuff. We made dinner with the last of our groceries and relaxed a bit, as it was raining quite hard. 

We went out briefly, as the rain let up a bit, to have one last beer at BBC (Bogota Brewing Company). I had a lovely smokey porter and Jives had a honey lager.