Friday, January 14, 2022

Last night I went to bed about 10pm but (soon?) woke up feeling overheated. I laid there remembering when we returned to the room Teresa commenting about how cold it was and did something to the A/C. Did she turn it off? If so, soon we will all be roasting under our duvets. I got up, turned on my cellphone flashlight and saw the temp was set to 24. That equates to about 78 degrees, no wonder I was feeling hot. I set it to 20 (70 degrees) and returned to bed but the damage was done, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. That sure makes for a long night. At best I occasionally catnapped until morning.

I stayed in bed while the ladies got ready and left for breakfast. I got up at 9am, took my shower, and met them on the hotel balcony restaurant by 9:30. I had French toast and they had empanadas and something else Colombian. Coffee was American style and I paid the 76,481 bill in cash.

Our hotel has no beach front (but 3 pools) so while I’m writing this blog the ladies went to a nearby hotel beach area.

I hope you all appreciate this sacrifice I’m making.

I received a $13 credit from Barnes & Noble because of the problem I had with one of their ebooks and they are going to discuss the problem with the publisher.

I met the ladies back in the room. Laura made 2:30pm reservations at a local restaurant but I need to wear a shirt with sleeves so she bought me a couple t-shirts from a man on the beach.

We took a taxi to restaurant Candé in downtown? Cartagena. The streets (and sidewalks) are narrow and appear to all be one-way. We had to show our vaccination cards to enter. The restaurant was a quaint local seafood restaurant with live music.

You can see that Laura had a full fish, Teresa had a seafood plate, and I had their vegetarian plate although chicken was also available.

(The order of the photos didn't come out the way I wanted. Definitely a learning curve there.)

I made a trip upstairs to the restroom and found an open room all mirrored. From the door handles you can see there are 5 restrooms and only a small painted moustache or lips determines if it’s a men’s room or women’s room.

The check came to 297,360 and we paid in cash.

While Laura made a trip to the restroom Teresa confided in me that Laura is spending a lot of her money on fancy restaurants. I told her it’s probably Lenny’s money so she doesn’t care. Teresa said she’s got her own credit card. I explained that, unlike Colombia, you can have joint bank accounts or he could just have a card issued in her name.  

We walked around (downtown?) Cartagena and the walls of the fort. Not very impressive from what I saw.

Vicky told Teresa there’s a Zara store in Cartagena that is supposedly less expensive than Medellin’s but we couldn’t find it.

The ladies spent at least an hour going through a row of tourist shops. Laura bought a few things that thankfully are pretty small so as to fit in our suitcase.

We returned to the hotel just before dark. I noticed for the first time there is a Plaza (small mall?) next door to the hotel that we will have to check out.

We had a talk with Laura about us not needing to have expensive breakfasts, lunches, and dinners every day. I suggested we could have a snack in the bar above the restaurant instead of lunch.

We were all still full from lunch so we skipped supper this evening. The laides got all dolled up and left about 9:15 for a lounge with live music in the Estalar hotel next door. I read a bit and went to bed at 10pm.

To be continued…

 

The New York Times’ 7-day average of new daily infections and deaths has the US with 782,397 ð 803,736 ð 806,157 new cases and 1,825 ð 1,873 ð 1,928 new deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of yesterday, Colombia has a total of 29,857 ð 30,283 ð 34,923 new cases with 69 ð 96 ð 106 new deaths. Medellin has 4,570 ð 2,904 ð 3,298 new cases from January 13^th to 14^th. Envigado has 157 ð 261 ð 261 new cases from January 13^th to 14^th.

 

T-shirt of the day

Just another day.