Plaza de Bolivar y the Roomba
Saturday, August 19th - in the morning we strolled around the Zona Rosa by daylight. There were some upscale malls just there. But we didn't get anything.
Around noon we went to the old part of town to meet up with Cristina's cousins. Apparently the rideshare app of choice here is DiDi, which I'd noticed google maps automatically recommends these days but hadn't heard of anyone using before. With this driver and all subsequent ones here they insisted one of us sit in the front passenger seat. Some cultural thing? About not getting hijacked from behind? Because in the past in other countries when catching a rideshare ride by myself and hopped in the front passenger seat I've had them act like that was really weird.
Our driver dropped us off at the end of a pedestrian-only boulevard thronging with families. There were street performers and people selling things from little tables. As with the night before people would address us to hawk their wares but immediately desisted on the slightest expression of disinterest. The effect actually being that while in countries with annoyingly persistent shopkeepers i'd be careful to never look directly at their wares and at best briefly side eye for anything worthwhile, in this case one felt free to examine items as much as one wanted without fear it would work the shopkeep into a mania of persistence.
We examined the strange (to me) fruit one man in his cart, he happily told us about them and cut open two different fruits to give me samples, though now i forget what they were called. Cristina bought a bag of lychees from him.
Presently we came to a broad plaza with a cathedral on one side and old colonnaded buildings on the other three sides, and a large statue of Simon Bolivar on a pedestal in the center. Many families were strolling or idling on the plaza.
We took some pictures and presently Cristina saw her cousins approaching. They consisted of her cousin (whose name i actually haven't quite learned because we always refer to her as "your cousin" / "mi prima"), who is 42, her son Anthony (23 but looks 16-18), and her precocious daughter Carlota, who came running to give Cristina and jump hug. The cousin's husband is an engineer currently working for a petroleum company in Gabon in West-Central Africa.
Anthony spoke pretty good English so he mostly acted as the translator between me and anyone else. Carlota was also enthusiastic to piece together questions for me from words she knew, and she was very good.
We proceeded up the side street beside the cathedral and went into a very nice restaurant there to introduce me to traditional Colombian food. I had the "Bandeja paisa" Which was kind a a sampler of a bunch of different things. It was very deliciouso
On our way back to the plaza we bought some [???] from a lady selling it from a cart. She a large a bowl of fruit simmering and poured this hot juice into little cups and added a tot of rum into each. It was a bit like mulled wine.
Rare encounter with English speaking tourists at the drink cart as a young couple from Holland who didn't speak Spanish were trying to order. Anthony helped them translate. They were friendly, the guy was wearing a Dropkick Murphy's shirt which is a band i like a lot.
After that we bought little satchets of corn kernels to feed the pigeons on the plaza, which Carlota had been particularly looking forward to. After feeding the pigeons we attempted to fly a kite Carlota had but we never succeeded in getting it to stay airborne.
"You are mortal" Anthony said to me sincerely. "What?" "You are mortal" "well yes but why are you telling me?" "You are more tall maybe you'll have better luck with the kite " "ohhh" (but no luck)
And then parted from them to rest a bit in the hotel, with plans to meet up again with Cristina's cousin and Anthony that evening to go to a "roomba" in the Zona Rosa, going clubbing basically.
And so we did. They met us in front of our hotel around 22:00. Once again i took the minimal amount of things with me lest i be relieved of them during the night. We walked around the Zona trying to decide where to go in. Finally tried the place with the mariachi-dressed staff but that seemed more along the lines of like a Mexican hofbrau house. Second place we tried turned out to be just ideal though, just kind of contemporarily cozy and elegant. Cost us i think around $25 each to get in and then we had to buy a bottle (we chose a Venezuelan rum) for $70 to get a table on the second level. I don't think I've been clubbing in like twenty years. Anyway we just had fun dancing amongst ourselves. Here on the second level we were level with the elegant globular lights hanging over the second level, half the time there were live musicians down there. It was altogether very nice. I found myself i thinking I can't believe I'm here dancing with my gorgeous fiancee and her relatives, _our_ relatives in BOGOTA of all places. <3
At one point the MCs were hyping up the crowd and asking where people were from and the cheering when he called Venezuela was almost as loud as for Colombia.
At 03:00 the club closed down, we walked back to our hotel and Cristina's cousin and Anthony took a DiDi or taxi home.
[Originally posted August 22nd]