We went to Medellín in February…for the weekend. It was a place we knew we wanted to see and flights were cheap so even though we only had 2 days, we decided to go for it.

Erin and Andy joined us and we jumped in a cab and headed straight to the airport after school on Friday. The flight was quick and we were in Medellín and settled into our hotel in time to head out to dinner. International teaching becomes a small world after you’ve been doing it for awhile so we had the advantage of knowing people who live in Medellín. Jen and Andy taught in Honduras while we were there and moved to Colombia this past summer. They were very helpful in recommending areas of the city and different activities. Despite the fact that they had to go to a workshop at school the whole weekend, they even met us out for dinner on Friday night. It’s always fun to be able to visit someplace totally new and see familiar faces!

We spent Saturday enjoying the amazing weather (not rainy and cold like Quito has been all year!) and riding the fabulous public transportation. We got a great tour of the city as we rode the train across it and then jumped in a gondola to head up the side of the mountain. Medellín is similar to Quito in that it is kind of a long city nestled in between mountains. The train runs the long way and then the gondola is perpendicular to it. Here in Quito, we have the Ecovia, a bus that runs the long way, but we marveled at how nice it would be to have a gondola to take us up the hill to our house from the bus. It was nice not to have to walk up this massive hill in Medellín and we got amazing views of the city along the way. I even managed not to have any hyperventilating panic attacks like I did the only time I’ve ridden the teleferiqo here in Quito!

After enjoying public transportation for most of the morning we headed to the Botero museum to enjoy some giant people. Botero is the most famous Colombian artist and is known for his sculptures and paintings of voluptuous men and women. The museum has a sculpture garden in front of it where we had a pretty entertaining time taking pictures.

In general, the plaza where the museum is located is really beautiful. The surrounding buildings are really interesting and it was fun to people watch.

Then we went in the museum and took some more dorky pictures with sculptures. We also took pictures of interesting paintings, but those turned out much blurrier so I won’t post them here.

We wandered around a bit more on Saturday afternoon and found some other cute plazas and ate a few arepas con huevo and munched on some ice cream. Medellín felt incredibly safe and it was fun just to be outside, enjoying the weather in a new city.

Saturday night involved some serious people watching and some even more serious dark beer drinking. Medellín is known for its beautiful women…and its butt implants (or at least that is what we had heard about before getting there). Our hotel was in a popular nightlife area so we staked out a table on the edge of an outdoor patio for the evening. It was perfect for checking out all the party goers on their way by. The restaurant also happened to have dark beer…something that is very hard to find (and is very expensive) here in Quito. We got a table keg of dark beer, played cards, and enjoyed being outside at night without freezing.


Sunday we had planned to go on a Pablo Escobar tour, but this proved to be much too complicated after receiving all sorts of different excuses from our hotel and the tour company. Instead we opted to eat an absurd amount of delicious breakfast pastries and then we hung out in a nearby park for the day. Erin and I are both in grad school right now so it was a chance to get some work done, while also enjoying the weather (have I mentioned the weather was amazing!?!) and the clean city.

A weekend was a very short amount of time to spend in Medellín, but as our time is coming to a close here in South America, I’m definitely glad we crammed it in. A beautiful city with great art, scenery, nightlife and of course, an interesting history. Hopefully we can find time to go back again some day!