Ah, the fruits of our labors!

Well, today was a another great day with my daughters!

We started the day off with an early morning trip to the market to buy fruit. And I mean early ~ no showers or anything!!! My friend, Diana, picked us up at 7:00 and took us to this market in a part of town I don't know at all. It's basically in a huge building, but there are tons of vendors! They sell everything from potatoes and sides of beef to flowers and baskets. It is a little crazy because the vendors are pretty aggressive. This is their livelihood, you know! Anyway, Christina in particular,wanted to buy some of the unusual fruits that we have here. We went to one stand, and the woman was like a one stop shopping queen!!!! She had everything: papaya, mango, ychujas (?), guanavada (?), guava, and other things I can't remember the name of right now! In fact, the only thing she didn't have (nor did anyone else) was mamoncillos. Which is very sad since I really love them and had told the girls about. But apparently this is not the right season for them. Which is an odd statement since they don't have seasons here..... hmmmmmmm.



Our "Canoe o' Fruit"

Anyway.... after the market, we went back home to nap, write emails, and shower for the day. Around 10, Arlet and her son, Mariano, showed up. Arlet has been wonderful with me ~ taking care of the housework, cooking my meals, doing my laundry.... She is amazing. Anyway, today is a regular work day for her, but it was also a chance for her to meet my daughters (about whom I talk incessantly!) and for me to give her and Mariano gifts.



Well, turns out, she had gifts for us as well. I told you she was amazing!!! She gave me salt and pepper shakers (which I needed!) and a bowl and serving spoons. Way more than I expected!! And she gave each of the girls a bag ~ handmade with sort of pre-Colombian geometric designs. They love them!







Arlet loved her camera and Mariano was thrilled with his new Spiderman!!! So much so that he sort of forgot about the crayons and paints!! Well, he tried to be polite and go to them every now and again, but then he would quickly get distracted by Spidey again! lol He is such a cute little boy!

But we couldn't stay and play too long, as today was our Monserrate and La Candalaria day. So off we went, to the foot of a mountain at one edge of Bogota, and we took a gondola to the top. (This is the one that took me almost an hour to hike up ~ straight up!!!) The ride was GREAT!



Once at the top, we checked out the lights on the church and the walk depicting Christ's crucifixion, and the bazaar ~ where Christina finally found post cards!!





Christina really loves that last pic because of the 'poser' in the background!!!!





My beautiful girls!

The view from the top was gorgeous (we sure picked the right day for this excursion!!!). The city was spread before us so that we could almost imagine that between 6 and 11 million people live here!!!









Then we headed down to the old colonial part of the city, La Candelaria. Our first stop was the Museo de Oro.









After that, since we were starving!!! we headed over to Crepes and Waffles for dinner. Yum yum!!! Once fortified, we headed out to cruise the narrow streets of La Candelaria.











The architecture is beautiful and the Plaze Bolivar was so pretty with the many Christmas trees, decked out in white leaf-lights. We even saw a llama with shoes on!! But we couldn't stand still for too long or people would approach for handouts.



There were just too many beautiful sights to see ~ we could barely keep up!

After seeing the most beautiful sights in the neighborhood, we once again headed for home. Exhausted. We only rested a few minutes, though, before going out for our before bedtime hot cocoa. But not just any cocoa ~ the WORLD'S BEST COCOA!!!!




I of course had no trouble with mine, although Christina showed me up! Jennifer, though, who by the way had a crepe filled with rich dark chocolate only hours earlier, had a tougher go of it!




Can you guess which cup is whose???