Bogotá - Hello Colombia

The capital of Colombia - Bogotá - unfortunately didn't impress us much. There are many gray houses, architecturally rather unattractive.

Exceptions always confirm the rule 🤓
An exception was the Plaza de Bolivar which was quite nice and overrun by pigeons, Monserrate and Palermo (which we only saw in passing.

On the first of the two days in Bogota, we visited the Old Town Candelaria (with Plaza de Bolivar).

Typical Colombian dish - MEAT! 💪 🍖🍗
By chance, we found a beautiful church: Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora del Carmen.. luckily the name is not so long.. I had to read it three times until I had the complete name 😥 🙈

Then we went to the Monserrate viewpoint. You can go up and down with the cable car - a real bargain for 6€ 🤓

Cable car lower station 🚡

At an altitude of over 3000m, you have a great view over the city, which looks better from above than when you're in the middle of it.

Here, too, you could walk around a bit and explore many tourist shops.. there is the same stuff everywhere 🙈 we even found Peruvian sweaters, albeit not as often as in Peru.

Church must of course be there 😁

The second day was spent in the area around Park 93. Since July 20th is Independence Day in Colombia, most people had the day off and spent it in the park or riding bicycles - two lanes were closed specifically for people to cycle undisturbed.

Quite impressive were the 3 different streets that run parallel through the city: one just for buses, the second for cars that drive straight ahead for a long time and the third for cars that will turn soon. Good system but still there are frequent traffic jams 😅

At Park 93 there are a lot of food options, but we only had ice cream 🍨 after having the leftovers from the previous day for lunch 🤓

In the evening we wanted to have Arabic food. After the Uber dropped us off, we found the place closed due to the holiday. But we were lucky and found another Arab. It was probably even cheaper and super delicious 😎 We even took something with us for the trip to Salento 🖒 (changing in Armenia)

By the way, the bus (Boliviariano) was super luxurious - with screens to watch movies. Although built for taller people than me.

Now I can reach the footrests too 🙋

So these 7 hours can be endured.

Next stop: Salento, Colombia (Zona Cafetera)