Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

Reina took some dirty clothes to her mother’s to be washed and dried.

Jim and I went to the hotel again for breakfast.  Today their Wi-Fi wasn’t working so I couldn’t use my iPad or Jim his smart phone. Jim talked to one of the managers that spoke English (Maria Yolanda Sierra C.; Hotel Golden Palermo Calle 37 #79-47) and was told he could take a taxi from the hotel to the airport for 60 mil.  That’s the same price I paid when I visited here in June.  

Coming back to the apartment we cut through Viva! Mall.  An interesting thing about Exito is they use Pneumatic tubes (Wiki Pneumatic Tube Transport) to carry money between each of the cashiers and their office.

After we got back to the apartment we changed into shorts and sandals and walked around the neighborhood east of Viva! Mall.  

About noon we stopped at Blue Marlin (Avenida Nutibara 74B-20; www.RestauranteBlueMarlin.com) and Jim had a shrimp cocktail for 24 mil and I had an iced tea.  It was kind of a fancy place and what he got wasn’t what he was expecting but he said it was still good.
(37D-19)I picked up a Colombiano newspaper and started looking at it.  A little while later a man having lunch there gave me his.  Turns out his was today’s and mine was 3 days old.  That was nice of him.  I may start reading it using Google Translate and my dictionary and maybe I’ll finish it in a year or so.  LOL.  One thing I have yet to see for sale anywhere in Medellin is a postcard.  This restaurant had some postcards that were free – www.FreeCard.com. They are for advertising – mainly their advertising website. These may have to do for some people I promised to send a postcard to. 

After that we stopped at an expensive Mexican restaurant across the street but Jim couldn’t recognize any of the usual Mexican dishes.  We then stopped a short distance away at another - el D.F. (Av 74b #39-37) and it looked much more reasonable in price and the dishes were recognizable.

About 1pm we stopped at a little inexpensive restaurant along Avenida 80 (37D-19)  across from Exito and for 7 mil I got frijoles (beans), salad, rice, a small arepa, and a large slab of a thin steak.  Add to that my iced tea and the tip and the total came to 8700 pesos ($5).

About 3:40 this afternoon it rained for about 5 minutes along with a number of peals of thunder.  No lightning though it’s noticeably cooler.  My brother just emailed me from a Cuban restaurant.  He’s concerned about leaving because of the lightning.

A young man in a blue hat and blue uniform appeared to deliver a piece of mail across the street.  The received signed something on his clipboard.  Could this be the mailman?

We had dinner tonight at the Cuban restaurant about 11 blocks east of us called Bodeguita Havanera (Transversal 39 #75-10).  The food was good and the owner was very nice.  We watched our futbol team - the National Green of Medellin - play against another team from Medellin.  Our team was ahead 4-1 when we left in the 2nd half.   It cooled off a bit after the rain so I was able to wear a long sleeve shirt tonight.

Reina and I at Cuban restaurant.

Regarding pesos

At first when I kept seeing mil on their money or on a price I thought it stood for a million when actually it stands for a thousand, like millimeter or milligram mean thousand (or thousandth).  It does make it easier to work with numbers.  You only have to say 60 (in Spanish) mil.  And to approximate pesos to dollars I just drop the mil, divide by 2 and add a little extra.  So 60mil is about $35.