Miscellaneous Pictures from the Last Day in Bogota

Monumento a Los Héroes, in the median of busy highway

I wandered the streets of northern Bogotá today. There was nothing major on the agenda. All of the loose ends from my prior trips to Bogotá have been tied down, cut away, or unloosened, whatever it is you do to loose ends to make them loose no longer.

These two street dogs were laying around in the "Flores" area, which is an area around Calle 72 where, for some reason, there is a very heavy concentration of flower shops. Smells nice, but I'm surprised these pooches would think so. The older one was very affectionate, making me regret that I wasn't walking the streets with dog treats.

A couple of storefront restaurants caught my eye as I walking to dinner:

Can you see the sign?

Senora Choclo & Senor Cafe.  Mrs. Corn & Mr. Coffee.  I'm not really aware of corn and coffee being a match made in culinary heaven, but it works here in Bogotá.

And speaking of juxtapositions:

Arepizza!  When you can't decide between an arepa and a pizza.  (An arepa is a like a cornmeal-based English muffin.  It gets delicious when other ingredients are added.  Cheese being an essential.)

I opted for something more traditional.

Supper tonight was at the Central Cevicheria, where I've eaten a few times before.  Once you get passed the fact that their ceviche is in a mayonnaise sauce, it can be appreciated for its deliciousness.

I had the Ceviche de Aji Amarillo, which was a mix of raw seafood, in a spicy sauce with bell peppers and yellow corn.  Yes.  Yellow corn.  In ceviche.  It worked.

Dessert, of course, was a pisco sour.

Dinner the night before was also at a restaurant at which I had eaten before.

The Restaurante Club Colombia, owned by the Club Colombia brewery.  Once again, they served up fried plantains with a piquant sauce that I am 100 percent certain is pureed beats.

I again ordered the flank steak, which is served in a tomato and cheese sauce, along with potatoes served in the same sauce.

But the real reason I desperately wanted to come back to this restaurant was the dessert.

Merengón.  Two merengue cookies.  Lots of chantilly cream.  Raspberries and raspberry sauce.  And fresh soursop, or guanabana.  Delicious and, I believe gluten free.

That concludes this trip to Bogotá.  I will end on a surreal note, a Salvador Dali from the Museo Botero:

Dinner at the Club Colombia Restaurante

Inside the restaurant

For my last night in Bogotá, I wanted to eat someplace nice.  The guy sitting next to me on the flight down from Panama City had recommended the Club Colombia.  It's sometimes good policy to listen to strangers on airplanes.  This was one of those times.

Bogotá was lit up for Christmas.

A short, quick walk of about 20 blocks or so, and here I was:

The Restaurante Club Colombia.  It wasn't easy to find as it is set back from the street, with no signage, and not really well-lit.  It's like a secret hideout:

But in actuality it's got that "old school" charm:

Dark lighting.  Dark wood.  Red walls.  Reminds me of the "old Vegas" restaurants.

The appetizer was fried plantains with a side sauce that I couldn't quite place at first.  It looked tomato-ish in the dark light, but it had no tomato flavor.  It looked like a jam of some sort on the thin, crisp plantain, but the flavor was too piquant for a fruit jam.  But I knew that flavor.  It was beets.  It was a beet puree.  And it was pretty good.

As you can see, I'm having a beer.  "Club Colombia" is a prominent national beer and this is their restaurant.  It seemed only fitting to have one of their cervezas.  I had the "roja," because.

For dinner:

The sobrebarriga, a flank steak, cooked for eight hours and served in a criollo sauce.  Yes, that's a flank steak, or four of them, piled up.  A "criollo" sauce is usually finely chopped tomatoes and onions.  This had been cooked down to smooth.  It actually tasted like my mother's tomato soup-based sauce for stuffed peppers and sarma.

It came served with a side order of roasted potatoes served in the same sauce.  Between the steak, the beets, and a sarma-tasting sauce, this is exotic food from a foreign country I could've had my parents eat.

For dessert:

Merengón.  Awesome.  It was two merengue cookies, topped with cream, served with guanabana and raspberries.  I am all about the guanabana.  In the U.S., we can only get guanabana as little cans of juice in the Mexican food aisle.  In Colombia, it is everywhere.  (Guanabana ice cream?  Yes, please!)  And it is delicious.  The merengón?  Messy, but delicious. 

The place filled up when I was there.  Colombians aren't quite Argentines when it comes to dining late, but this place filled up when it got to the nine o'clock hour.

And on the walk back to the hotel, I saw one of these:

This was my first and only Starbucks sighting in three trips to Colombia.  The local "Juan Valdez" chain keeps this country almost Starbucks-free.  It's on the list of reasons I love Colombia.

Arrival in Colombia

Parque 93, Bogotá, with Montserrat looming in the background

Sunday, May 3, 2015. The day to say "good-bye" to Panama and "hola" to Bogotá, Colombia.

For those of you who do not know, Bogotá is huge. As in "just under eight million living in the city limits" huge. The neighborhood in which I am staying, Chico, is the upscale barrio. How upscale?

A cool refreshing Zipaquirá ale from the local brew pub

I went to the local "chain" of brew pubs, the Bogotá Brewing Company -- there seem to be a few locations around town -- and the coasters say "Bienvenido al 1%." Translation: "Welcome to the 1%." Maybe I'm putting my American spin on this, but there really can't be any other interpretation. The clientele of this upscale establishment are the "One Percent" in the Occupy/Elizabeth Warren sense of that term. But here in Colombia, they are out and proud about that fact. They celebrate it.

I ordered the nachos to go with it.

Colombian-style nachos at the Bogotá Brewing Company

They were surprisingly tasty. Lots of really good chicken meat under that healthy dollop of guacamole and sour cream. But you know what was missing? Cheese. And chips. There really weren't enough chips to eat this respectively. But once you got passed the fact that these weren't "nachos" in any Americanized-Mexican sense of the word, it was a quite tasty snack.

Bogotá Brewing Company building, seen from Parque 93

Again, the neighborhood has a distinctly upscale vibe. And it is safe to walk at night.

So after my beer and snack, I headed across the street to an interesting looking sports bar called "Buffalo Wings." I was hoping it was a local rip-off of the "Buffalo Wild Wings" chain, but, unfortunately, it WAS the local Buffalo Wild Wings chain. But for some reason in Colombia, the wings aren't wild.

Club Colombia cerveza roja. Pretty good, actually.

I had a local cerveza, a Club Colombia, roja, of course, my favorite color for a beer. I liked the sports bar atmosphere of the place. The crowd was into a game from two of the top teams in the Categoriá Primera A, also known as "Liga Águila," the top soccer league within Colombia. The Millonarios, the local heros, were playing Nacional from Medellin. On the drive in from the airport, we passed a soccer stadium and the cars driving up to it were screaming and yelling and whooping it up, most with blue and white flags from their car. Those are the colors of the Millonarios, so it was the early arrivals for this game that I saw.

Watching Los Millonarios in a Bogotá franchise of Buffalo Wild Wings. Does life get better?

Two quick observations. First, calling the team the Millonarios is no big deal in Colombia. I got over a million Colombian pesos for this trip. Total value of a million Colombian pesos? Less than $500. Second, Los Millonarios play their home games in Estadio Nemesio Camacho. You are not allowed to wear a belt -- or otherwise bring a belt -- to Millonarios' games. Oh, the game? Nil-nil draw, which I presume was great news for the visiting side.

Lively twilight time in Parque 93

Parque 93, which defines this neighborhood, isn't especially large. But it was quite active in the twilight hours. My hotel is a block south of the park.

Atton 93. Formerly known as the NH 93. On Calle 93. I detect a pattern here.

My hotel is a nice "businessman's hotel." There are a lot of embassies in the neighborhood, and a lot of financial institutions, so there's a lot of businessing going on.

The room has a giant king-sized bed which pretty much devours the room.

Mi cuarto en mi hotel

  And that's OK with me, given that it's time for sleep.