Week 2: Working our minds, bodies, and tastebuds

Day 13
After our fun weekend in Cali, we were ready to get back to (vacation) business in Medellin.  Sunday night we were craving to have something, anything, that resembled a vegetable.  Since many portions of this city take the day of rest quite literally, we were having a little bit of a hard time finding a place that was open.  We ended up wandering over to Parque Lleras again, mostly because we knew how to walk to it and that it was going to be our best bet for having a restaurant with the lights on.  Ironically, we discovered a great steakhouse that had exactly what we were craving:  a huge, ginormous, heap of vegetables salad.  Yum yum.  Also, they had some fresh fruit juices available, and I could practically feel my body hanging the "welcome back" sign up for all the fresh fruit and vegetables we ate.

Day 14

Our morning started with a kind of hilarious but effective work out.  Both Jay and I are people who like to exercise, and although we have been walking a lot, doing salsa lessons, and taking the stairs as much as possible, we both felt like we needed a little more to make our bodies feel goooooood.  Especially since much of my "walking a lot" involves walking to the chocolate shop. Our friend Bobby from Cali had told us about his little fitness routine he was doing over there in his studio apartment, and Jay googled it and it seemed like something we could handle.  So we did our little circuit training routine, and were actually a little sore from it the next day!  Success!  We took our endorphin filled bodies to spanish class, and Yadi was proud of us for doing our homework in Cali.  Then she blew our minds with a super tough lesson.

After we left class in a daze, I convinced Jay that we needed to go check out another park area of Medellin, Parque de Pies Descalzos (Barefoot Park).  This place was fascinating to me for some reason.  And Lonely Planet said it was a must-see, so we needed to go!  We got to the park and ate some lunch while we observed the park in action.  Basically, it is a huge park with lots of little sections that are meant to be a different sensory experience for your feet.  In most of the sections you are not allowed to wear shoes.  There was a little reflection pond to splash your feet in, a huge sand/gravel area to walk in, some crazy stones sticking out of the ground to climb on, and a bamboo forest.  Being there, we also discovered where all the Medellin families take their kids to play.  There were kids everywhere!  They were being pretty cute in the water and sand pit thing, but neither of us much felt like competing with them to get our feet in, so we opted to go through the relatively kid free bamboo forest.  

sand area with stone things to walk on

reflection pond and some of the park

mystical bamboo forest, ha!

  

After our journey through the bamboo forest, we decided we needed a change of scenery and headed up to Laurales.  We had only seen Laurales at night, and we had apparently missed out on what an adorable neighborhood of Medellin it actually is.  We took a cerveza break at a restaurant, then decided to walk a little bit to see the 'hood before we took a taxi back.  Our walk was going so nicely that we actually ended up walking all the way back to our apartment!  Luckily, our long stroll took us right to the chocolate shop by our place, and it would have been rude not to stop in and say hello and perhaps pick up a few things while we were there.

Day 15

More spanish class, more spanish learned!  Our friend Angela had invited us over to her apartment for some lunch and afternoon swimming, so we headed over there after class.  She had told us that she had a good view, but we had no idea how serious she was about this till we got there. Her apartment is located way up a hill/mountain in Laurales, and you can really see a lot of Medellin from her apartment building. We splashed around in the pool, admired the vista, and hung out for awhile. Angela speaks about as much English as we speak Spanish, so our conversations are probably pretty hilarious to an outside observer with all the hand gestures and wild explanations going on. She had made us a tasty chicken pasta dish.  It was a really great afternoon and it was really sweet of her to go through all that trouble for us.  Before we left that night, she took us to the top of her building so we could see more of Medellin by night.  It was gorgeous and I wish had taken some fancy point and shoot camera training so I could better capture how pretty all this stuff is.

Medellin by night

Angela y Jay (or Jake, as Colombians keep calling him, haha!  It is hard for Colombians to say just the "Jay" part)

Day 16

Jay and I completed our little work out routine in our apartment again, and then headed over to Spanish class.  Today's class was slightly easier on our brains, and we left feeling pretty good about it.  We did a little grocery shopping, relaxed and did our homework, and then met up with Angela at Calle 33 for a little while.  Angela took us to a "rock" bar where they played a mix of American rock songs with a lot of Spanish songs.  I was telling Angela about my deeeeeeeep love for Spanish music, and told me she would put together a little compilation for me.  I practically jumped out of my seat from excitement.  I apologize in advance to anyone that is going to be riding in my car or hanging out at my house when I get back.  It's going to be all Spanish all the time for awhile, haha!

Day 17

Jay and I started our day off with another salsa lesson.  Mr. Owwwwwwwch Andres was all booked up, so we had a different instructor, the very handsome and very entertaining German.  German taught us some new moves, and had Jay twirling me all over the place.  German would count/dance and yell "Chufla! Doble! Triple! Yeeeeeessss, verrrryyyyyyyyyy gooooood" each time we went through the routine.  It was awesome.

After salsa we hurried up and made ourselves presentable for Yadi.  We went to class, and got to learn a other verb tense!  Hooray!  After class, we decided to cross a restaurant off of our Medellin bucket list, Crepes y Waffles.  We have seen this place all over, and at first I thought it was just a cheesy chain restaurant, but then both Yadi and Bobby gushed about how delicious it is.  They did not lead us astray, Crepes y Waffles is indeed quite yummy. 

After lunch we made a half-hearted attempt to shop for some stuff, and then headed home.  Jay was just wanting to relax, and I thought this might be the perfect opportunity to go check out the Museo D Antioquia in the Plaza Botero we had run into the other day. I hadn't really ventured out on my own very much, as it is a little intimidating being the only blonde/tallest girl around, not speaking the language all that well, and not really knowing where I am.  But I did know exactly how to to get to the museum, so I thought it might be nice to give Jay a break from me check out more of Medellin.  

The Museo D Antiquia is awesome.  The building itself is beautiful, and very peaceful inside, giving a stark contrast to all the hustle of downtown Medellin outside.  It also houses many works from the artist Botero, who is a very famous contemporary artist and is from Medellin.  All of his paintings and sculptures are done in such a way where the subjects are projected to be very voluminous, and they are pretty interesting to look at.  He has also dedicated a lot of his more recent work in the past 15 years to display the way that Medellin has changed and grown from it's less than desirable past.

Museo D Antioquia

Botero Sculptures

Marie Antoinette and Luis XV1

Famous Pablo Escobar Dead painting

From the museum I had been able to see some interesting side street off of the plaza, so I decided to go check those out before going back to the apartment.  One street was about 500 yards of fruit stands, and it was difficult to not just grab a grape off of the vines they were hanging from.  I bought myself another guanabana juice, and walked around a little more, taking in the sights from Plaza Botero.

fruit as far as the eye can see

Plaza Botero

Medellin knows how to do dessert.  How anyone is skinny here I will never know.

This weekend we are leaving Medellin again and going to check out the (from what we hear) gorgeous Cartagena.  I'm so excited for some beaches, shorts, and Caribbean fun in the sun!