Colombia 2023

In May 2023, Justin and I made our second vacation in South America, visiting Colombia, with stops in three cities: Cartagena, Medellín and Bogotá. We planned this trip for the same two weeks in May, 2020 but ultimately had to cancel our vacation as the world went into lockdown and quarantine. 

 

Our First Stop: Cartagena, on the Caribbean Coast

Justin hanging out on the wall of the old city

We visited the local market. It was huge and very primitive. Lots of fish, meat and produce in addition to plenty of clothing, electronics and other miscellany. 

Many of the streets of Cartagena were adorned with festive and colorful decorations 

Boat ride out to our dive/snorkel site.

Justin did two dives--the first one was among sunken boats.

Dominos

We visited the Colombian National Aviary, about an hour outside of Cartagena. All of the birds are recovered from illegal trafficking and there are so many interesting species.

An Andean Condor, only 3 feet from my camera!

No idea what this is but isn't it fantastic?

After the Aviary, we headed to the beach nearby. We didn't bring much cash and didn't have a ride home arranged so we were a little nervous about running out of money and getting stranded but it all worked out fine and we made it back to town after a couple of hours at the beach.

Cartagena's beautiful sunset

We jetted off to Medellin on Wednesday in the morning and took a city tour in the afternoon. Here's a living wall built on the side of a government building.

Botero's man on horseback with a backdrop of the Ministry of Cultures's famous building. The building was designed by a famous Dutch architect and under his direction, the left side of the building was built. Then the Colombians took over the project and finished it in a quite different style (right side).

The Botero bird statue that was bombed in 1993 by the FARC, killing 30 people. The artist insisted that the bombed statue remain and become a tribute to those who were killed. Botero donated an identical statue that was sited just to the right of this one.

Justin discovered chicarrónes on this trip and decided to order a who plate of them one night...plus beautiful cocktails.

On Thursday, we took a daytrip to Guatapé, about 2 hours outside of Medellín. The big attraction is this giant rock that you can summit. Check out all those stairs zippering up the rock. It's the only way up.

But after 700+ stairs up to the top, check out this view of the reservoir.

After we summited and climbed back down, we took a moto-taxi into the town of Guatapé for lunch and a boat ride.

The colorful, terraced village of Guatapé

On Friday, we hooked up with some Seattle friends, Anna and Abner, who have a son and daughter-in-law living in Medellín. By coincidence, they were visiting at the same time we were.

The sprawling city of Medellín

We went rafting on Saturday, down the Rio Verde and found some Class IV rapids. Of course, the raft flipped on the final rapid but everyone survived!

Bogotá might have the largest mix-master in the world! This was just a block from our hotel.

We took a tour through the Candelaria neighborhood downtown with all of its outstanding street art. Turns out, Justin Bieber had a hand in legalizing street art and graffiti in Bogotá. After a concert, Bieber graffitied a wall and despite it being illegal, was celebrated. After that, the city bowed to public pressure to decriminalize the practice.

La Catedral Primada in Bogotá's Plaza de Bolivar

We took the cable car up the Cerro de Monserrate, a peak on the edge of the city. You can also summit on foot but I wasn't up for the climb that day. Check out the view of the city that goes on and on and on. 

In the City's iconic Museo de Oro (Gold Museum), there is a pre-Colombian artifact commemorating a ceremony where the new chiefs floated out to the middle of lake, coated in gold flakes, throwing large quantities of gold into the lake. The legend of El Dorado came from this story, and many gold rushers have since explored the lake bottom, looking for the riches.

On Wednesday, we took a day trip out to Zipaquira to visit the Salt Cathedral, a church that has been built into a large salt cavern. Here is the entrance, all lit up in a spooky blue.  The walls are really salty--I tasted it.

Here is one of the sanctuaries carved out of the salt.  

After the Salt Cathedral tour, we walked into town for lunch. 

On our last full day, Thursday, we checked out a few museums including the Botero museum. Afterwards, we took a cab to the large market--a much cleaner and well organized market that the one we visited in Cartagena--check out this egg stand! We found a lechona (roasted pork and rice) stall for lunch.

On our final night, we went out for a very fancy dinner and a classic Bogotá restaurant, Harry Sasson. It was a perfect way to end a lovely trip. We're so grateful we were able to finally take this trip, after a 3 year delay due to COVID. It was worth the wait!

Geneva to Lyon on Two Wheels plus Paris

Ah, back in Europe, our first major trip since this whole pandemic halted travel and just about everything else. Justin really wanted to plan an itinerary where we could visit the two sets of friends we have living abroad--one couple in Geneva and another in Paris. So, with our start and end points defined, we set out to build a cool itinerary that would excite and entertain us for two weeks. We spent a day and a half in Geneva, three days in both Lyon and Paris and a week cycling from Geneva to Paris. This was our first cycling trip abroad and really the most either of us been on bikes contiguously and we really loved this mode of travel. It gives to a chance to see some of the nooks and crannies and slow down for some real gems that aren't in the typical travel guide. And the exercise is a great counterbalance to the large quantity of French pastries and cheese that we gobbled up.

We started in Geneva, but not without a big hiccup--Lufthansa's pilots initiated a 1-day strike on the very day we were planning to take that carrier to Europe. With 3 hours of waiting and haggling at the airport in Seattle, we were rebooked for the next day, leaving us with one less day in Geneva. The silver lining is that (in theory), we are going to receive 600 Euros each for the flight cancellation--we haven't seen the money yet though. 

After napping for a full four hours after our arrival, we walked down the the waterfront and met our friends for a bubbling pot of cheese fondue lakeside. With one less day on our already brief stay in Switzerland, we only had Sunday to spend seeing the sights and missed our chance to get up into the mountains to hike about and take in some of the scenery that Switzerland is best known for. 

Jet d'Eau--the fantastic fountain on Lake Geneva that shoots up a spout of water over 400 feet. We have dozens of photos of this geyser but this one, so beautifully up-lighted, is a stunner.

We met up with our friends Jill and Scott who recently moved to Geneva. Here we are smiling, each with about a pound of cheese in our bellies, at the casual Bain des Paquis beach restaurant. In addition to our simple bread and cheese dinner, we had a great show of some young muscular men played in the water adjacent to our table.

We visited a local market/flea market and found a ton of foraged mushrooms on offer (and lots of other amazing-looking produce). The "flea" part of the market was a little uninteresting for us but if you need cheap underwear, we saw some options.

Lake Geneva was amazing clear and full of swans. Where we were, the lake was surrounded by busy roads, lots of buildings and crowds of people but still looked pristine. We took a boat ride in the afternoon on the lake with our friends and got some great views of the city and the surrounding mountains.

Here we are at our starting point, suited up for our first day on bicycles, our first of many selfies.

This is about 10% of the way into our first day of cycling. We have snaked our way out of the city center and the surrounding residential neighborhoods and have just reached the bike path that is going to take us into France later in the day.

All smiles as we enter France on the first day of cycling. There was a MAJOR hill involved in getting to this border -- we worked hard to get this far.

One of the many scenic vistas of the Rhone river on our journey.

So many miles of road, just ready to deliver us to our next destination. This was a pretty typical trail for our ride throughout the week. I think this is for cars too but as you can see, it is a road less traveled. 

The Rhone river is dammed up and to provide electricity and irrigation water. We crossed over and passed many dams.

Hooray, after around 37 miles and 1860 feet of uphill, we arrive in the riverside town of Seyssel, France. It was a cute little town but kind of dead on a Monday. We walked around, had a snack, and later found a little pizzeria for dinner, alfresco dining on the river.

Here's the church square across from our hotel. We met a group of cyclist friends from France and Germany who were starting their journey to Lyon with the same tour company we used. While they had a different trip planned, we did cross paths with them a few more times along the way.

Biking these roads since the beginning...

On the second day, we stopped in the picturesque town of Chanaz, a little village along a canal. Here's the town's old waterwheel, located at the top of a very steep hill (that I side-eyed because my legs were real sore from the first day's ascent)

Our destination on Day 2 was Aix-les-Bains, a lovely town on the banks of Lake Bourget. We pulled over on our ride into town and found a little swimming hole on the side of the road. Discretely changing into our swimsuits, we were able to take a refreshing and cleansing swim in this turquoise water. We got into town having missed the hour when lunch is served and had to scrounge up some cycling snacks to tide us over. We rented a paddle board from the hotel and glided out onto the lake for about an hour, using the paddle board as our swimming platform. We headed back when the rain clouds above started threatening and were safely in our hotel room when the skies opened up. We had to pull out our rain jackets to make it to dinner but that was the last action our raincoats saw for the trip.

On day 3, we peddled around the south and west sides of the lakes, climbing up far into the hillside above the lake. Exhausting, but the views compensated for the effort. On the south side, we stopped at a regional park with a big bird blind to view the birds in the marshlands along the lake.

When we made it to the top (not really the top but as high as we were going), there was this mile-long tunnel (Tunnel du Chat) taking us through the mountain and onto the other side. There was a big art installment throughout the tunnel highlighting the culture, art and history of the region. And the tunnel was delightfully chilly after sweating our way up in the sun.

This is the view when we emerged at the exit of the tunnel.

Riding a little further, we passed through this gorge of La Balme. We ended in the town of Belley which was probably our least favorite stopover because the town is a little depressed economically. Also, our bike tour company messed up the luggage transfer and we were left without our clean clothes until 6pm so that put us in a frustrated mood but also diverted our attention from the couple of things Belley had on offer like a local distillery. C'est la vie.

Day 4: (Belley to Morestel) Another lovely day for cycling.

Our bike route took us by this lovely waterfall in Glandieu. We packed a picnic to share and ate bread, cheese and salami next to this site.

Crossing the Rhone river on a very tall suspension bridge.

A cute little village.

Justin riding through a tunnel of trees.

We've arrived! We showered and changed and hit the town. Morestel was a cute little village with a medieval tower. We toured the tower and the painting exhibition in the old town and took in the tranquil garden where we are pictured.

Our snacks were depleted and we needed to stock up on some bicycling fuel!

Day 5 (Morestel to Cremieu): Oh, you know, just cycling by a thyme field. 

Our route brought us to this little village called La Balme, home to this amazing cave. When we arrived it was closed, as was nearly everything in this tiny town. We found one open spot for lunch and had a very large and leisurely lunch, waiting out the opening of the cave at 2. We are so glad we did.

Inside the cave--a river passage leading further in. Along with the requisite bats, Neanderthals settled in this cave and later, in the 9th century, a chapel was erected. Even the King of France (Francis I) stopped in to visit. 

By mid-afternoon, we arrived in Cremieu--a cute medieval walled city. We stopped by the tourist office for a map and wound our way around the city, checking out old buildings and doors until making it to the Ursulines brewery in the former Ursuline church. We tried a few of their beverages and then wandered around checking out our options for dinner.

Day 6: Cremieu to Lyon. Our last cycling day! By this point, we were in a groove, but our butts were ready for a day off. 

We rode several miles through this giant regional park on the outskirts of Lyon.

Finally, we've reached Lyon but we're still miles from the city center. We spent our Saturday afternoon poking around Parc de la Tete d'Or.

The gardens of Parc de la Tete d'Or.

So strong at the finish line in downtown Lyon!

Here we are, having pedaled our last mile. We stayed at this little boutique hotel that caters to cyclist. They did our laundry as a welcome gift!

Sunday morning, we took a walking tour around the streets of Lyon. Here's a view of the hip Croix-Rousse neighborhood.

A view to the sky from one of the secret passageways through buildings that silk workers used to speed up their journey across town.

One of the famous murals painted to make the building look vibrant.

Lyon and the lion, atop the city at La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourviere.

Overlooking Lyon with the basilica and tower in the background. We could also see Mont Blanc in Switzerland that day, and the general outline of the route we had traveled from Geneva to Lyon.

The Roman amphitheater in Lyon, still in use for concerts and shows today. 

The basilica on the hill, all lit up.

On Tuesday, we traveled to Paris via high speed train. What a great way to go. We stopped at the Halles de Paul Bucose in Lyon to pick up a picnic lunch for the train ride and chose some of the best cheese of our trip. Two hours later, when we arrived in Paris, we set out to explore the city, trying out a few activities that we hadn't done on our previous visits. We spent the afternoon shopping the cooking stores, looking for souvenirs. In the evening we ate at a small restaurant recommended by a friend and had a quintessentially lovely French dinner, made extra special by the chef and his son who hosted us.

We took a touristy boat tour down the Seine River. Later for dinner, we met up with our friends Rosalia and Al who moved to Paris last October for 1 year but are now planning to stay indefinitely--they love it so much. (Sadly, we didn't take a photo!)

I couldn't leave France without sampling a few oysters.

And then on Friday we were off. Well, except for one little hitch...the air traffic controllers were on strike in France! Our plane sat on the tarmac at the ready but the ATC kept us there for 3 hours. Boo. We missed our connection in Chicago and had to spend the night but we made it back to Seattle the next day, already someone adjusted to the time zone.