Friday, September 9th, 2016

As we were walking to the health club I saw dark clouds approaching from the east.  I just wanted to get to the gym before the rain I don’t care so much about after as the first thing I’ll probably do is take a shower so I’ll be getting wet anyway.  About 5 minutes after we arrived it poured so hard it was actually noisy.  Today I did 15 minutes at speed 6 on the treadmill in addition to going thru all the other weight machines.  The rain stopped about 30 minutes after it started.  Walking out of the building Teresa said something about a gringo we just passed.  I turned around and it was Alan – the gringo I hadn’t seen since last December or so.  He said soon he has to go back to the US again and I told him to let me know when he returns.

Among this week’s new US movie releases I would like to see Sully (8.0) and The Disappointments Room (7.2).  Locally, there isn’t anything I want to see.

I loaned 300,000 pesos to Teresa’s friend Martha who should be returning it on Monday or Tuesday.

We left the apt at 7pm and as we were walking down the stairs Teresa and Laura were having a discussion.  When we got out to the street and I was looking for a taxi Laura showed me her cell phone.  She had called an Uber car and it showed it would arrive in 5 minutes.  It showed the name of the driver and the license number of the car.  Five minutes later he still hadn’t arrived and Laura said he’s lost so I started looking for taxis again.  Laura showed me the Uber app again and I understood another car was on the way.  It arrived in 10 minutes.  It was a newer clean car and he took us to Contenedores Food Place.  I asked Laura how much it costs since it had no meter and how do I pay?  Do you have an account that it’s charged to?  Do I pay the driver with a debit card?  With cash?  She didn’t know.  Great!  It cost 9,200 pesos and I gave the driver 10,000 because I didn’t have any change and he didn’t offer me any in return.

We met Jim, Jeff, and Sean there and went to the Italian restaurant named Tano Argento.  There was no one at that restaurant so we easily got a table that seats 6.  The chairs were metal folding chairs so that’s going to cost them a point in my review.  There was a duo playing blues music so that was nice. 

For the table, Jim ordered 2 bottles of red wine – La Consulta Tinto BT – for 86,000 pesos and an order of mozzarella sticks.  I had a bowl of minestrone soup and lasagna bolognesa, Teresa had the fish of the day, Laura had something called Magherita, Jim had spaghetti, Jeff had fettuccine, and Sean had chicken lasagna.  Everyone liked there food although Jim said that the pasta was overcooked.  We ordered 3 different desserts that we shared and 4 of us had café con leches.

The total bill with tip came to 324,196 (about $112) and Jeff and Sean picked up the check.

We said our goodbyes to Jeff and Sean who have to catch an early flight back to Chicago tomorrow morning.  They said they thoroughly enjoyed their time in Medellin and want to come back.  I’ll be meeting Jim tomorrow after he switches from a room for 3 to a room for 1.

We quickly caught a taxi back to the apt and it cost less than 6,000 pesos.

T-shirt of the day: It’s not easy being so smart.