a couple of years ago we travelled to colombia, i was (6 weeks!!) pregnant at the time, working and way too tired, so i skipped the post on our trip… but now my friends are planning to go and asked me about the post, so i though it would be the perfect excuse to revisit all the tips and pictures to share.

i have to be honest, for the first time we didn’t plan our trip as thoroughly as we usually do, and since we didn’t have much time, we ended up going to the capital, bogotá, and cartagena. overall we stayed for 5 nights, i was sorry to miss the “eje cafetero”, the coffee plantations,  but it still allowed us to get to know both cities pretty well.

in bogota we spent half a day at la candelaria, old bogota, on a weekend it was packed with locals, strolling through the streets with their kids, buying baloons, taking pictures with the lamas and buying fresh fruit juices and sweets from vendors.

we visited the cathedral, la catedral primada, at the bolivar square, and we tried a delicious cherimoya juice, one of my favorite fruits!

we loved the people watching and the bustling atmosphere of the city, but for me, the highlight of bogotá was visiting the botero museum. fernando botero is a colombian artist, and i have been a huge fan since i was very young growing up in madrid – i loved it, you have to see it if you can!

in bogotá we stayed at the bog hotel, a modern hotel with friendly service and cute bar. as i said i was pregnant, but the lemonade was delicious! we specially loved it’s location, close to restaurants and shops. they also had a small pool on the top floor, which was nice to refresh at the end of the day.

we had the most delicious dinner at la mar, for the delicious ceviches and cool atmosphere. club colombia was another favorite, it was busy and had simple local food.

we flew to cartagena and felt we had arrived to a totally different place. whilst in bogotá we were in south america, here we felt we were in the caribbean, with a lot of culture and deep roots.

one of the biggest attraction of cartagena is to go on daytrips to the islands nearby. since we live in beautiful islands with the best beaches ourselves, we chose to stay in the city the whole time. one morning james went diving with diving planet and really liked them, it was interesting for him to dive in a different caribbean spot.

cartagena is a huge city, but most tourists stay inside the walled city. we stayed at casa claver, a small boutique hotel next to san pedro claver’s church, very central and walking distance to everywhere. we walked the walled city, visited all the little squares and gorgeous churches, and even went on horse carriage tour, very touristy, but so relaxing.

we went to pasteleria mila for a casual lunch, hello arepas, tortilla soup and amazing pastries. we ate at the cafe san pedro for a great al fresco dinner with view of the church. strolled to cafe del mar for sunset drinks. but the best meal of our trip was at salou, delicious seafood and a ceviche that blew my mind. we just wished that we had tried it earlier in our trip!

hope you find these belated tips useful, we loved our visit to this beautiful country and hopefully we will be back for the coffee plantations someday :)

ps – our trip to santo domingo in the dominican republic and our trip to havana in cuba