Learning to Stroll: Seeing the Sights

Tomorrow is officially 3 weeks in Colombia, and we finally did our first sightseeing together. Matt works constantly. It's made doing things together difficult, especially since his weekday games now begin at 1pm instead of 5pm. The bus leaves the hotel at 9am, and he doesn't get home until after dark. Not too many sights to see when it's dark outside. He is supposed to have Mondays and Thursdays off, but they are filled with either a practice or leaving early for a road trip. Poor guy isn't getting to do anything other than work.

SO, this past Thursday's half day of our own was great! We went to an older area of the city and began our tour of Museo del Oro. 4 floors of ancient native gold and 1 exhibition of Chinese dragons. There was more gold than I've ever seen in my life. It divided the collection by regions and purposes for the pieces. They were so detailed, and it's hard to believe they are as old as they are. The Chinese pieces were even older, dating back to thousands of years B.C. (no pics allowed of those though).

After the museum, we headed to Plaza de Bolivar. It was a cloudy day, so our pics aren't the best. The plaza is named after Simon Bolivar, a military and political leader who led much of Latin America to independence. The plaza is surrounded by the Palace of Justice where the Supreme Court works, the National Capitol which is the seat of the Colombian Congress, the Lievano building that serves as the seat for Bogota's mayor, and the Cathedral built in the early 1800s. They were also setting up Christmas decorations! I can't wait to go back and see everything lit for the holidays.

After the plaza, we ventured around the palace and took some pics of doors, where guards proceeded to stop Matt and tell him he has to have permission to take pictures of anything surrounding the palace. It was a door...at the Musuem of Archaeology. We weren't even taking pics of the palace! At least we snagged one.