The first two mornings at the hotel, we’d had regular food for breakfast: eggs, waffles. But today we got tamales! They were pretty good.
We had a super fast ride to the airport, as it was a Saturday morning and apparently the awful traffic virtually disappears on the weekends. So we got to the Bogota airport a little early and spent time wandering around the domestic departure side. As airports go, Bogota isn’t bad. It’s certainly nicer (cleaner) than Panama.
The flight was pretty quick – just over an hour, I think.
My first impression of Cartagena was that the airport reminded me of Hawaii. Actually, that was my second my impression. My first impression was that it was fucking hot.
A quick cab ride into the Old Town (aka the walled city) brought us to our hotel, where they were extremely friendly. We got a room on the second (top) floor in the heart of Cartagena’s San Diego neighbourhood. For reasons that elude me, the interior of the walled city is thought of as three separate neighbourhoods, even though you can walk from one side to the other in 15 minutes or less.
For the second hotel in a row, we (I) screwed up the safe and had to get the concierge to reset it for us. I’m awesome.
We went for lunch, had some decent arepas (good, though maybe not as good as Bogota) and empanadas (those were pretty good).
We spent the afternoon walking around the old town and its walls. It was hot but it was windy so it was more bearable than it would have been without the breeze.
After a little siesta, we walked around town again in the evening and saw some Caribbean dancing. We went for happy hour, but it was a slow (Caribbean?) happy hour. It took forever to get our mojitos.
Afterwards we went to the Green House, which was virtually empty, but where we had our best meal of the trip so far: I had fresh fish – let’s say the Colombian equivalent of fish and chips. Good stuff.
When we got back to the hotel, we were pleased to see that Bourdain had a second Colombian episode, for his current show. (We had watched the No Reservations episode before we came down.) So we watched that and went to bed.