They got in pretty late on Saturday night, so we took it easy on Sunday with a quick shopping trip to the Usaquen market and an anniversary lunch at the fabulous French restaurant near our house, La Brasserie. Since we celebrated their 30th anniversary in Paris, a good French meal seemed to fit. Plus, we all love French food.
Luckily, it was lunch and not dinner, because we spent three hours enjoying our French food. We even had the added excitement of seeing U2 leave the Four Seasons across the street where they had been staying for their Bogotá concert, not that my parents know who U2 are.
We spent Sunday evening recovering from our meal, and by Monday, we were ready for adventures. I arranged a van to take us all to the funicular and cable car station for getting to the top of Monserrate, which is over 10,000 feet above sea level and has great views of the city of Bogotá. Online it said that the funicular was closed on Mondays and only the cable car was open, but when we got there, we discovered that the reverse was true. This was a bit of a relief to my mom and sister who are afraid of heights. They get credit for being willing to try the cable car though.
There was about a 10 minute wait to get tickets, and then another 10 minute wait to get on the funicular, but it wasn't too bad.
When we got to the top, the views were indeed incredible. We took our time though, since it was an extra 1,500 feet on top of the 8,500 my family had just had to get used to the other day. From the funicular station, there was a pretty steep walk up, past the thirteen stations of the cross.
I had read some blogs online that had recommended against bringing a stroller. While there was a smoother path along one side, I was glad that I didn't have to heave Elena up and then make sure she didn't go freewheeling back down. She did a great job getting up the hill, slowly but surely.
Once we made it all the way to the top, we took some time to enjoy the view.
There's a newer church there, but also the remains of an old monastery.
After all the walking and photo taking, it was about lunch time. My dad did some restaurant recon (there are a couple at the top) and chose Casa San Isidro.
The inside was classic rustic, with a fire and a live piano player.
We asked to sit out on the balcony where we could enjoy the view while we ate.
The menu we were presented with was in French and in Spanish, and our food vocabularies were being quite challenged until the waiter told us that if we just flipped the menu over, it was in English. Much easier! We all agreed that the food was okay, but not as good as the French food we had had the day before, and at this restaurant, we were paying for the view. We decided to just go with it, and we ordered two helpings of strawberries flambé for dessert. It was prepared with butter, sugar, orange juice, and Gran Marnier, then served with ice cream, yum!
After lunch, we walked around and took a few more pictures, and then we headed back down the mountain on the funicular.
Monday afternoon was about relaxing and waiting for Piedad to make us empanadas from scratch. They were delicious and gave us the energy we needed to pack for our trip to Cartagena. I'm going to do Cartagena in a separate blog. We spent four lovely days there, and then came back to Bogotá for one more full day of excitement.
On our Saturday back in Bogotá, we got a van to take us all (except Judy who asked for the morning off) to the Museo del Oro, or Gold Museum down in the old part of the city. It was a fascinating museum. Yes, the gold was shiny and pretty, but what was most interesting was the history of all the civilizations in this region that used gold to worship, to show status, and to honor their dead.
We were particularly impressed with the size of the earrings and the nose rings.
The ancient statues of San Agustín are on Lonely Planet's "must list" for Colombia, but they're pretty removed from anything else, so we felt pretty lucky to be able to find one in the museum to admire.
Elena cracked us all up, because she got really into the audio guide.
At first she was like, "What's his name? How can I talk to him?", but after a while she just accepted that he was a recording. Each case had a number you pushed for the audio guide, and she wouldn't let anyone help her. She got quite good at entering the numbers.
Some of the display was behind a set of impressive safe doors.
And we almost missed the display that ends up in most guidebooks with the entire wall of golden objects.
It's in a circular room, and they only let in a few people at a time. Once you get in, all the lights go off. Slowly, different parts of the display light up in time with chanting. It's kind of spooky, and Elena was scared at first, but afterwards, she asked to do it again with grandpa who had been taking his time with the displays and was a ways behind us. We figured, why not, so we did it twice. In addition to the semi circle of gold, there was a circle in the middle of the floor with gold and an emerald. Part of the religious ceremonies was to throw these objects into a volcanic lake. This is where the myth of El Dorado came from. If we could get to the bottom of this impossibly deep lake, we would most likely find a treasure trove of gold and emeralds. In the display, the circle lights up slowly to the sound of small splashes.
Mom was so impressed with all the gold, she got herself a pair of gold earrings in the gift shop.
Our original plan was to eat lunch nearby, and then walk to the La Candelaria. Unfortunately, the restaurant we were planning to eat at, didn't seem to exist. La Candelaria was much farther from the Gold Museum than we thought, and it started to rain. With meltdowns all around, we squeezed the six of us into a regular sized car (both girls on my lap) and retreated to the apartment. It was clearly too much on top of all of our other excursions.
We spent the afternoon recovering and then went out for one more fabulous dinner. This time we met up with some of our friends and went back to La Brasserie which my family had enjoyed so much the first time. The meal was excellent, as usual, and it seemed like a nice way to round out their trip. They got up early this morning to head back to Washington, but I think they enjoyed Colombia as much as we do.
We loved Colombia but the best part was to spend time with the family. And we do know who U2 is even if we wouldn't be able to recognize any of them on the street.
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