La Candelaria in Bogota
Bogota is a beautiful and interesting city and I got to spend a wonderful day here today.
Our city tour (I had Jose and his mom Gladys as my personal tour guides) lead us to the oldest part of town first, the so called “Candelaria”. This is probably the part of town where you will see the style of homes you’d expect from Latin America, the Colonial style homes with tile roofs. Very nice is the view of the mountains in the background.
Bogota is 2,640 meters above the sea level and you can tell: first of all it is rather cool in this city (temperatures are always in the 60s, at night they can drop to the 30s) and second, when travelling from a lower hight city you can feel the exhaustion in the first couple of days. Nevertheless, we were in for a good walk today, and luckily we got to stop a couple of times, first for lunch, then for “candelazo” (a warm drink made with Aguardiente, the national liquor) on top of the city’s mountain “Monserrate”. Also luckily, we decided to pass on climbing up the mountain and took the “teleferico”.
Botero
Our tour also led us to “La Casa de la Moneda” where we saw a great art exhibition – my peronal highlight, I LOVE art and miss it a lot in Central Florida; hopefully we’ll soon have a bit more opportunities to see art in Central Florida. Not only works by internationally famous artists like Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Klimt, Miro or Dali were exhibited, but also by the most famous Colombian artist, Fernando Botero. He is known for his very distinguishing style of painting “large people” with exaggerated proportions. I love his work and was happy to be able to see such a vast selection of works. The picture I am posting here (one of many) is one of my favorites because of the doors that frame the scene. It adds even more interest to the picture itself. Only better would be to see the painting by peeking through a key hole…
We ended the day at Monserrate where we took in some breathtaking views of Bogota. I noticed though that, with exception of the moutains that surround Bogota, there are relatively few green areas in Bogota. I would like to see a bit more nature in this city, it would certainly cheer everything up a bit. Especially since some parts of town seem rather grey and colorless.
Jose and Claudia above Bogota
Colombian Food
Food wise we did well, too. The picture here shows a Bandeja Paisa. This is not the typical food for Bogota though. A bandeja paisa consists of meat (in this case ground beef, but it could be steak as well), rice, beans, plantains, avocado, an egg (sunny side up), chicharron (fried pork skin) and an “arepa“, a typical Colombian rice bread.
In case you ever feel like trying Colombian food, there is a Colombian Restaurant in Lake Mary. It is called “La Antioquena” and they serve Bandeja Paisa among many other delicious and authentic dishes. They are located at 3861 Lake Emma Road and can be reached at 407 829-2532.
Bandeja Paisa
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