We had a late flight to Medellin on Tuesday. The airport we flew into is 45 minutes away from the city by taxi, in the mountains above the city. As you’re winding down the mountain, eventually you pop over the side, and the massive city spreads out through the entire valley thousands of feet below you. It’s stunning, seeing the endless city lights as far as you can see in either direction.

And for some reason, at this point was the first time I finally had a “oh my god, what the f!#k are we doing” moment. We quit our jobs and we’re traveling for a year and we’re in Medellin now?! I think I was hanging onto some 80s and 90s concepts of the city, with Pablo Escobar and everything.

Don’t get me wrong, I can get “whatever I want” here, as I’ve been advertised numerous times on the street. But that view of the city is so, so wrong. This is a beautiful, cosmopolitan, lively city, with great food, beautiful public spaces, and great (and well-dressed) people. Erika and I agreed we’d fallen in love almost immediately.

El Poblado

Our hotel is in a very upscale neighborhood called El Poblado. This area is filled with interesting bars and restaurants… really, I mean filled. And they’re loud and filled with customers every night. How can this one neighborhood support so many restaurants? We spent our first full day here walking the full length of the neighborhood. Like most of Medellin, it’s very hilly, so our walk took us down a fairly steep hill closer into town, of course leaving us with only uphill to get back. One interesting thing we noticed in our first walk is there are a surprising number of sex shops. All sorts of fun costumes displayed out front, for men and women, so everyone can have a good time!

There is also a good bit of street art and wall murals, which are huge and beautiful. And also make good pictures.

After a very Colombiano lunch, we looked up where El Tesoro, a mall that we’d heard about, was at. Yep, a mall. We came all the way to Medellin Colombia to go to a shopping mall. And just to really seal the deal, when we got to the mall, we patronized not only McDonalds, but KFC too! We’re the worst. Anyway, we’d heard from our laundromat in Cartagena that the views of the city up there were spectacular. It turned out the mall was only like a mile from our hotel. However, it was also about 800 feet in elevation above us. So… we walked up there. Yeah, it was as hot as hell, and we beat ourselves up with it. But the view was indeed spectacular!

We managed all this walking and climbing despite being slowed down some. Sadly, Erika was the first to fall. We knew it would happen eventually, and we knew it would be Erika first. You guessed it: it’s diarrhea. I had hoped we’d make it more than a week, but can’t say that we expected to.

Parque Arvi

We’d also heard there was a cable car that goes up the mountain side, offering more views of the city. So on day two, we decided to do that. Medellin has an excellent, modern metro system, with above ground trains that connect to three cable car lines. The trains are large, clean, fast, and frequent, and are heavily used by residents. The cable car lines are newer, and when they were added, connected some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, greatly increasing the opportunities of those residents. It also does provide great views of the city!

On our walk to the metro station, apparently we were exuding too much American. The guy walking in front of us picked up on it, and we spent the rest of the walk to the train talking with him. He’s from Florida, and works for an airline so he gets to travel a lot for fun. Naturally, he’s lived in the DC area (Silver Spring, specifically), because everyone has some connection there. It was fun trading notes on our experiences in and thoughts on Medellin!

These cable lines also connect to Parque Arvi, a nature preserve and archeological site high in the mountains over the city. We went up to the park and wandered around some, but weren’t able to take some of the longer hiking paths as we were wearing flip flops. Fail!

San Antonio and Parque Botero

On the way back, we stopped at the San Antonio metro stop to explore the Plaza de San Antonio and surrounding area. Immediately around San Antonio is a massive, crowded market. We held our pockets as we waded through the crowd and eventually wound our way around to Parque Berrío. Here, we sat and rested and just felt and observed the city around us. Medellin is a city of about 2.5 million people, and as we saw the hustle and bustle around us in the plaza, it felt like it.

From here, we wanted to head a few blocks north to Parque Botero, to see the sculptures there. Fernando Botero is an artist from Medellin with a very… distinctive style. He’s donated a lot of art to the city, much of which can be found in the park that carries his name.

On our walk there, we hilariously ran into the guy we’d made friends with earlier in the day. Really?! In 12 years of living in DC I never once ran into anyone I knew there, but 2 days in Medellin and only one other person in the city we knew?

The park, once we made it there, was beautiful, with at least a dozen large Botero statues scattered about:

As I said, distinctive style.

This plaza is also marked by the gorgeous, towering Palacio de la Cultura:

What’s Next?

We still have a few more days in Medellin and a lot we’d like to do. Come back soon for some more pictures and stories of this city!