Medellin - Blogabond

Medellin is the only city in Colombia that has a ”subway”. It is also the hometown of the infamous Pablo Escobar, not that he has left any kind of mark on the city.
Our visit to Medellin started very early in the morning and the first thing we did was going to our hostel. It was nice and cheap but the only problem was that this time there was nothing at all that separated the toilet from the room, not even a curtain or anything. But we figured what the hell since the hostel was so much cheaper than everything else so we went with it anyway.

on a street in Colombia

The first day we spent just walking around the city shopping a little bit and looking at churches. It is a very beautiful city where we felt really safe. It was also very easy to get around using the subway, train, metro or whatever you want to call it.
We visited a botanical garden which was basically a huge park with big temporary statues in it. And also of course loads of flowers and cactuses with little signs.
When we left the park we saw that there were loads of people gathered around something, so naturally we went over to check it out. We found six women in bikinis with more silicone than a porn-movie. There were fake breasts and fake asses posing for cameras. We stayed there for a while watching the scene and it seemed like they were filming for like top model only with girls who looked like they should work in porn instead.

Next, we had gotten the tip to take the subway up into one of the suburbs that are high up on the hills surrounding the city and take a cable car up to the top. There we could watch the sun set over Medellin. It was really beautiful and you had a really nice view over the city, only problem was that the area is supposed to be really dangerous and poor so we couldn’t leave the station and had to wait for 30 minutes until the sun went down.

That same night we took the metro back to check out the next tip we had gotten. We went to the river in the middle of the city where they had put on an amazing light show.
To start with they had built an enormous fountain over the river that was lit up in ever changing colors and in the background they had covered an entire hill in lights.
As if that wasn’t enough then along the whole riverside there where different light shows like small stages that all had different themes. One had a pirate theme, another somewhat of a mushroom theme and it just went on for what seemed forever. It felt like you were walking around high in a really weird carnival with hundreds of people selling food and popcorn and then all these light and people playing music.
This was probably the most we have ever walked in one day on our entire trip. When we came home both of us fell asleep almost with our clothes still on and with feet aching like hell but it was definitely worth it.

Next day we started with walking around a little bit but since we had covered most of everything we decided to take it easy and save our strength for the night.
We had decided to go out and try the night life and had found one club that was supposed to be very popular with dwarves working as waiters. Only when we came there the place was closed so we ended up just taking the cab back, and so ended our night out in Medellin.
On our last day we slept late really relaxed and waited in the room until checkout just packed our bags watched TV and did not much at all, even from travelling you need to take days off.
So at 3 o’clock we went to have lunch at an amazing crepe restaurant we had found the day before. While we were sitting there we started talking to a local guy at the next table, just basic things like how to get to the bus station and how long time the bus would take. So we chitchatted for some time when we waited for the food and just about as we got our food the guy had finished eating so he paid his bill and the waiter turned to us and told us that he paid our bill as well.
A bit shocked we thank him and he tells us that it’s a gift from him to us to remember Medellin. And it really became a great memory. I have never had anything like it happened to me before.
After lunch we went to the bus station since we thought the bus would be 12-13 hours but when we came there we found out that it was only 8 hours which in most cases would have been good news but for us it meant that we couldn’t take the bus we had planned on since then we would arrive in the middle of the night.
Lucky for us the bus station was connected to a shopping mall that also had a cinema so to kill some time we went and saw Avatar for 2 dollars and what a surprise. It was an amazing movie and both I and Steffi loved it. So after that we just got on the bus and left for Cali. The Salsa capital.

Chris

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Steffi & Chris on December 16, 2009 from Medellin, Colombia

from the travel blog: 212 days

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