After resting for a couple of days, we decided to do a walking tour on Day 3. We booked a free walking tour “Historical la Candelaria” with Gran Colombia tours. I chose this because it had fruits and coffee tasting. The tour starts at 10am, and we were a little late. Our tour organizer was Liz, and we had two gents from UK who joined us.

We started at Chorro de Quevedo square. It was believed that it could be one of the place where people started living in Bogota. Before that name Bogota came from Bacata used by muisca (indigenous tribe from Colombia).

We walked through the Calle de Embudo (Final street), it was one of the narrow streets in Bogota. We stopped by La Concordia Mercado to taste indigenous fruits.We tasted different varieties of guavas, lulu, and a lot of other fruits whose name I do not remember.

Next to it, there is an environmental way/axis, where there is a water way. It is a water canal and runs across streets.

From there, we crossed Museo Del Oro, La Candelaria to head to Bolivar square. Simon Bolivar was one of the freedom fighters and first president of Colombia. This is the largest square, where we could see parliament, mayor’s building, Supreme Court, Church.

Parliament

Supreme Court / Justice Building

Church, Religious leaders house

Mayor’s Building

From there, we went to Calle 10 and Calle 11. It houses the cultural center with a lot of importance to arts. Museo Botero is located there. And finally, we went to a coffee shop to taste traditional Colombian coffee.

We tip our tour guide, and bade goodbye to our walking group companions. One of the best things about walking tours is we get to meet different groups of people and we can interact, exchange stories and get to know each other’s perspectives, travel plans. Who knows you might end up seeing each other again especially when you are doing longer trips which happened in my 3 month euro trip.

After this, we went to our hotel, rested for a bit and then headed out for lunch. For lunch, every place had a meat menu, since we do not eat meat outside, we had our vegetarian meal.

Rice, beans, egg, fries and avocado

Salad bowl with plantain fry.

After lunch, we went to Museo Botero. Botero is an artist famous for adding more volume in his painting. One of the best things about this museum was there was no entry fee. Botero himself has donated more money to keep this museum free

After the Botero museum, we decided to finish Museo del Oro (Gold museum). It was another 500 meters walk. This was not free unlike Botero, however the cost was less 5000 COP/ 100 INR.

Museo Del Oro was a big one. We spent more than a couple of hours there. We saw how gold was mined, used by indigenous tribes of Colombia.

After a lot of walking on Day 3, we headed back home and on our way back we had a veggie hamburger and mango on the street.