Medellin – Turkey Day in the City Of Eternal Spring

For Thanksgiving weekend we took a short trip to “The City Of Eternal Spring”, Medellin. Plan was two days in town sandwiching a daytrip to Guatape. Enough time to get a feel of the city.

The nickname is merited, with Medellin being a tad warmer than Bogota, 70’s every day (still feels significantly warmer under direct sunlight than the raw number indicates) with the evenings being less chilly as well.

We stayed in a hotel/airBNB maybe a 15 minute walk to the trendy, bar and restaurant saturated Poblado neighborhood. We arrived late enough on Wednesday that after touching down at the airport and the long, windy road to Medellin that only a handful of restaurants were even open and able to deliver on Rappi.

Thanksgiving day we started off taking a cab to Plaza Botero, famous for the dozen or so bulbous sculptures that Medellin-born artist Fernando Botero donated to the city. We took in the busy plaza, enjoying the sculptures and the architecture of some of the nearby buildings. We remained a bit wary as our cab driver was nice enough to point out where NOT to wander off to from the plaza.

The plaza and nearby neighborhood were busy, some turistas like us taking pictures, lots of local vendors selling their wares… lots. And lots of every day people doing their shopping. Was a bit frustrating not being able to take 7 steps without being asked to buy something or just give people money… I’m accustomed to it, it’s a daily occurrence in Bogota and wasn’t uncommon in Asuncion, Paraguay, but this was a bit excessive.

We strolled down a walkway with more outside markets selling sunglasses, t-shirts, Pablo Escobar merchandise and eventually found a former palatial building which used to host government offices but some time ago was sold to private investors who turned it into a shopping mall. The entire, massive footprint (pun intended) of the first floor and some of the second are ENDLESS stores selling sneakers, trabs, running shoes, kicks, whatever you call them. Was a weird juxtaposition of seeing this fancy, well designed building merged with, say, Mercado 4 from Asuncion.

Feeling a bit hungry as well as tired of being asked solicited every 47 seconds, we hopped a cab* and headed to Parque Lleras in Poblada, a small park in a much more tranquilo neighborhood. We wandered a bit before heading to a Peruvian place for lunch. We both enjoyed our lunches (I, paradoxically, ordered an Argentine cut of steak at a Peruvian sushi-centric place) and were pleasantly surprised by the bill. We were anticipating it to be a bit pricy, but apparently it was happy hour (Thursday, 1pm?) and our entire meal was half off! Steak, chicken, shrimp cocktail, beer, coffee and water all for $20.

After hiking back to our room to for a short rest we returned to Poblado to take in some craft beer, take in Parque Poblado and grab some pizza from friend-recommended Zorba. Yep, Greek name, Italian food. Good pizza, great hummus, though all vegetarian.

Black Friday we decided to “Opt Outside” and head to Guatape, which has it’s own entry with lots of pics.

For our last day in Medellin we again opted to leave the city. Sort of. This time we took a cab to the metro to the metrocable to fly over a barrio that is perhaps a tad infamous and now thanks to metrocable, better connected to Medellin and improving, then continued over a few resilient farmers living and working way the heck up on the mountainside to continue on another 10-15min to Parque Avri, all so we could take a short hike.

Lots of beautiful views, both of the city in one direction and a whole lotta green in the other. Kinda like Monserrate here in Bogota.

Finished off with a return to Poblado for a few more craft beers and some dinner at well regarded Oci.Mde for some great ribs, better caipirinha and The Ramones “Pet Semetary” (and other tunes) playing at such volume (we were seated right below the speaker at the bar) as to render conversation nearly impossible.

Weekend closed out with a morning taxi ride way up one of the hills to the airport. Arrival was in the dark, departure was in a misty morning. Enjoyed the city and hope to return to see a bit more.

Items of note – No beer suggestion, best we had were just beers they brought in from Bogota. Also modes of travel for this trip included: taxi, plane, tuk-tuk, metro and metrocable.