Continued from Cartagena Day 1.

Good thing about South America travel is that it’s only an hour time difference from Austin. It’s really nice to not have to deal with extreme jetlag like going to Europe or Asia.

Our airbnb comes with two housekeepers who show up every morning to make breakfast for us and clean the house. Unfortunately, RL and I have the noisiest room. In the photo above, the dark doors at the end of the dining table is our bedroom, and there isn’t much sound insulation. Still, this room did have some benefits. Since it’s the room right by all the living area, it enabled us to keep a close eye on the kids which was very comforting.

The housekeepers Melba and Jelly cleaning up after breakfast for us. It’s quite nice to be able to eat a delicious home-made meal from scratch breakfast here daily.

Making a grocery run.

More photos of our cool airbnb. Me and RL’s room is to the bottom left. Those stepping stones next to the stairs leads to BH and DH’s room in the back. It’s a little hidden, like a secret room. CH has a room a floor above us and the kids have a room above the grandparents.

Pathway to the grandparents room in the back of the house.

No AC in the main living area, so windows open up and fans turn on. There are, however some mosquitos, unfortunately. It’s not super super bad for those of us who aren’t mosquito magnets, but it was brutal for me and Little KL

Such a cool roof top terrace to hang out at.

I was the last to wake up…well, I was dozing on and off for a while, but mornings ain’t my thing. RL had made me a plate of breakfast. Thanks babe.

Arepa with egg inside? The fresh pico that they made was super delicious. It’s also not spicy at all, just all flavor.

The weather forecast is supposed to be sunny and warm for the next 5 days.

The plan today is to take it easy, walk around later and get a lay of the land. RL decided to hop in the pool for a bit of quite time before the kids find her.

Me in my blogging spot. It’s a short enough trip that I’m going to save most of the blogging for when I get back to Austin.

I working!

The kids came up and RL told them to get their swimsuits on. Aren’t they cute?

Auntie joined RL and the kids for some poolside reading. Bet she didn’t get any reading done with those load crazies next to her.

Kids making a ruckus by trying to create a whirlpool.

Drinking the local beer. Not bad.

Everyone pretending to listen to BH.

Thinking.

Giant mango. The large fruits here reminds me of Costa Rica.

Alright, it’s late morning, we all had a late breakfast, but time to head out and walk around.

It’s humid, and it’s hot. Like uncomfortably hot.

P looks so tall standing up on the curb next to her Mimi. She’s only 10!!!

Old town is really quaint and beautiful though.

Las Bovedas. Originally these were built as vaults and then used as dungeons, and now serves as stalls to touristy shops…so same thing to me.

It’s hot.

On top of the old city wall.

It’s hot, let’s get out of the sun.

In one of the shops in Las Bovedas.

Cute.

All the shops basically sell the same touristy stuff, and it’s hot. We walked by a mall earlier, I think they have AC. Let’s go there instead.

I like those port holes.

Oh look, a mall with AC!

Found an Adidas store. Perfect place to get a souvenir for Little KL. He’s been collecting soccer jerseys from places he’s visited.

Wait…I know this. Andres Caren de Res is a well known restaurant in Bogota, I guess this is an outpost for them.

La Serrezuela, this mall is that round structure that we saw driving into old town. It used to be a round bull fighting ring, and they’ve redeveloped it into a mall and added this round element on top as a reference to the old structure and has bench seating all around events. Kinda cool.

It’s so much nicer looking at the city walls from inside the mall. The AC feels amazing.

We all wondered if they host cool shows here on occasion. We tried to look and see if there were any happening while we were here but couldn’t find any information.

Boundless energy. We are glad he’s getting over his illness that started back in Austin.

Oh no, game over.

The kids are definitely gonna be buying stuffies here.

Model of the old town. The round thing is where we are at. To the left of it is the grocery store, and and another block away from that is our airbnb. It’s nice to be in the middle of the mix.

I showed the kids that there are buttons to be pressed that makes different buildings light up.

Of course, they go crazy over all the buttons.

While the kids are clicking all the buttons, all the adults are just standing around watching them press all the buttons…sigh.

We are here, might as well eat lunch here. Seems kinda fun.

The theme is lots of red hearts and over the top decor. It’s pretty empty right now, but I’d imagine it’s more of a night party spot.

DH and her large, bowl sized mojito.

Negroni.

This magazine sized menu reminds me of Cheesecake Factory menu. It’s a little overwhelming.

Can you tell he’s been taking drumming lessons?

It’s a massive restaurant. Do they really fill all of it up during the busy times?

RL really liked these glass bubble hears they had pasted to the wall in multiple areas.

That’s a nice sized steak.

I got the seafood stew. Love it! In fact, all the stews we had in Columbia were really, really good.

Some sort of mandarin slushy drink. I liked this one. Tasted like dreamsicle.

Fun lunch for all of us. Cartagena is treating us well so far. With that said, Cartagena isn’t cheap, definitely not in Old Town. It feels like US prices here. I’m sure there are ways to live cheaply here, but being a tourist, we’d probably have to go way out of the way to eat and drink cheaply.

He deserves it.

Her haul from the stuffy store. Lip gloss in a old school flip phone case…except someone else had gone through and touched all of the different lip gloss and a test. She found out after she bought, and she cried and was sad about it. Eventually she got over it after we cleaned all the surfaces with a q tip.

A day devoted to not doing much means swimming time.

Don’t even ask me what’s going on here, I’ve no idea. RL says its CL trying to drown KL, which sounds about right.

PL is smart to stay away from those two crazies.

Vacation means definitely nap time. Zzzzzzz.

It’s time for dinner. Cartagena old town is beautiful in the day time and beautiful in the night time. The streets are very narrow and the sidewalks are extremely narrow. Many spots you cannot pass oncoming pedestrian traffic without one person stepping off the curb. Fortunately, most of the cars here go pretty slowly due to the amount of people walking and the narrow streets.

A couple short blocks from our airbnb is a very lively square. Though, the distances feel so much farther when there’s 8 people including 3 kids traveling together. Just lots to dodging, watching where you and everyone else step, and yell at different people in your group.

Dinner spot. They specialize in ceviche.

They are putting our table together. So we stared at this giant building/hotel across the street.

Kids are already tired. Auntie C was feeling exhausted and stayed home so it was just the 7 of us tonight.

They didn’t have room to fit our large group outside so we got the only table inside. It’s air conditioned inside here!!!

Head massage. Both of these two are fading fast.

Ceviche.

They are done for the day and the food is just barely starting to show up. Little KL has been acting up this whole time, he’s overtired.

Kids meals. Fried fish!

Squid ink paella. BH and DH had never seen or had squid ink anything before. They both gave it a try, it’s fine. Another very delicious dinner. I’m loving the food here in Columbia!

Everyone needs to try new foods. After much cajoling and yelling, he finally agrees to try a little bite. His sister had eaten some already.

LOL!!

Everyone laughed at it. Don’t spit it out, swallow it. It tastes fine, we all ate it and it’s totally fine. Soon after this, Little KL was fading so fast that part of the group left early to take LKL back to the airbnb so he could start getting ready for bed.

Alright, time to head back to our temporary home.

Quite the beautiful little square.

I had promised the kids ice cream if they tried the squid ink paella. They did, so now we are getting ice cream.

I carry a translated message of no nuts for PL in my phone. It’s always useful.

They wanted these strawberry flavor ball topping, but they also elected to have cones. We discovered too late that with cones you can only get chocolate dipping. Oh well.

My kids thought this church looks like a gingerbread house. It does!

Alright, let’s keep heading back.

Street vendors come out at night.

After we got back to our airbnb, BH wanted to go out and smoke a cigar. He had walked by a cigar shop on the way to the restaurant. I am tired, I’m staying home. RL did go with her dad though, so these are their pics.

Father-daughter time. Just smokin’ stogies and drinking rum.

To be continued at Cartagena Day 3 Part 1.