Quick update

I haven´t posted much recently because we´ve been too busy but here´s a very quick summary of what we´ve been up to, I´ll follow it up with some photos soon:

On Saturday night we went went out for Javier (Marcela´s uncle)´s 70th birthday for a meal and some drinks.

On Sunday we went to see Marcela´s brother Fer´s new house and then went to have lunch, we went to a place called Chia where there are loads of cabaña type restaurants on the side of the roads, one of these has become very famous and popular, built up from a man selling BBQ´d meat on the side of the road to an extremely popular restaurant. When we arrived we were given a place in queue and directed to a bar / small restaurant that´s been built just to serve as a holding bay for people waiting for a table in the restaurant. by this time it was getting quite late for lunch and we were told the queue for a table was still about an hour so we decided not to wait and to come back another day. We found another place just down the road where we ordered a parrillada, which is basically a barbecued mountain of meat and some arepas, quite possibly the most meat I´ve ever eaten in one go! On Sunday night we went around to Javier and Cecilia´s house to celebrate Cecilia´s birthday.

On Monday we went to the shopping centre with a plan to buy a few things we still need for Cartagena, in reality what happened was met Mary and then Monica, went for a beer and then went out for lunch at a BBQ cabaña place, where I had possibly the best steak I´ve ever had.

We then went to the top of the tallest building in Bogota with Orlando and Pilar, Marcela´s uncle and aunt to take some photos.

As you may have noticed there´s a lot of eating involved, especially lunch. Eating here is taken seriously and involves the whole family, for example at Javier´s meal there was about 30 of us and at the meal on this day there was about 20 of us! Every day so far lunch has either been a large meal at home with the family or a large meal at a restaurant with the family.

On Tuesday we went to Quinta De Bolivar, the house where Simon Bolivar lived (for a while anyway) and then went for lunch at a restaurant that doubled as antique shop, photos of this to follow! At night we went to the casino I mentioned and had a great night and ended up winning a fair amount at Blackjack.

That just about brings us up to now, the plan for today is to pop to the shopping centre and actually buy the things for Cartagena as we leave early tomorrow morning so this is the last chance, we´ll then meet up with Mary for dinner.