Impressions of Medellin
My hotel in Medellin was situated in a good location about a ten minute walk North of the main train station. The city has an elevated metro system and a tram system together with lots of local buses. The two main metro lines and tram system lines converge at the San Antonio metro station which was about a five minute walk from where I was staying.
I bought a card for the transport systems from the kiosk in the San Antonio metro station and it cost me about 3 USD including four journeys. The card that I bought allowed me use the metro, the tram, the buses, and the cable car system which I presumed was designed to take local residents up the steep slopes of the surrounding mountains on which lots of housing could be seen on.
To top the card up I would need to use the automatic machines that are located in every metro and tram station but these only take bank cards. If I didn’t want to use these then I would have to go to a kiosk and top up using cash but this facility was not available in every station as some of the kiosks that I saw in the various stations that I was in were closed. I rode on both the metro and tram systems and they are both very modern, very clean, well maintained, spacious, and air conditioned.
The part of the city that my hotel was situted in appears to have most of the older looking buildings in it so I presume that this area was the historical centre of the city. However it also has most of the larger modern buildings in it and I did stumble upon a large square in which some form of modern architecture or sculpure was located. The square was filled with lots of vertical steel poles, I have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to represent other than some nightmare that the designer was having at the time of their conception.
I then did my usual thing of walking around and taking photographs of whatever I saw that looked odd or interesting.
Near the San Antionio metro station I saw a very large building that had been constucted of dark and light stone giving it a rather unusual appearance. As it was borded by the elevated metro line, high buidings, and partially obsured by a lot of trees, it was difficult for me to get a good photo of it. I believe that the building is currently used as a cultural centre but I have no idea what it was formely used for.
In a small park near to my hotel named after Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South and Central America from Spanish rule, there was a statue of the gentleman himself sitting astride a horse. Very appropriate.
One morning whilst I was relaxing near to the park and having a coffee, a guy rode up and stopped in front of me on a small bike before making deliveries of bags full of arepas to the adjacent bars. The bike had a home made rack complete with its own prop stand to that he could park it whilst piled high with stuff without it falling over. Very ingenious.
The part of the city in which my hotel was situated is the busiest part of the city and I found that in and around this area there were lots of streets which were packed full of stalls selling every kind of goods that you could want to buy from clothing to Christmas decorations. Yes, it is that time of year already!
On Thursday morning I took the metro South to the Poblado area as I had been told that this was a popular place for toursits to hang about in bars and restaurants. It was a bit of a climb uphill from the metro station and when I finally got up to Polblado I was very dissappointed. There were only a couple of small streets with a few bars in them and there was not much else there. So I walked back down the hill and walked back in to the city along the main road that ran beside the metro line just to see a bit more of the city.
On Sunday morning I decided to walk from the city centre out to the Laureles area of the city which I had been told was one of the best parts of Medellin. It was a nice hot sunny day for a walk and as it was a Sunday the traffic in the city centre was also quite light.
On my way out to the Laureles area I crossed a bridge over one of the main roads that surround the city centre and the view of the mountains to the North, the direction that I would shortly be heading in, was quite scenic despite it being from the middle of the city.
Eventually I reached the Laureles area and I found it to be a very well kept and pleasant area having lots of modern and well appointed bars, restaurants, and cafes scattered amongst its broad tree lined streets. The area had a very safe and relaxing feel to it, everything was well maintained and there was no litter to be seen anywhere. This was what I had imagined the Poblado area to have been like but unfortunately it was nothing like this, it was rather run down and shabby by comparison.
Also in the Laureles area there didn’t seem to be any tourists about except me. The restaurants were mostly full of locals and there were even queues of people standing outside of some of them. I have never understood people who do the queueing for food thing but despite these strange people I found the Laureles area to be the best part of Medellin that I had been to and if anyone ever asks me about where to go in the city this is where I would reccomend that they go to.
On my walk back in to the city centre I encountered some street entertainers juggling machettes for the drivers held up at stationary traffic. Very impressive.
My overall impression of Medellin is that is very manic in the centre where my hotel was situated as it was constantly packed with throngs of people and the streets were full of traffic. There was nothing much for me to do or see in the Poblado area but I found the Laureles area very much to my liking as it had a very laid back and relaxed feel to it. I also think that overall Medellin is quite a safe city and like Bogota I never reeally saw anything that I would consider as dangerous.
I did see one car v bike accident at a junction near to where I was sitting but the way that everyone drives here, well that sort of thing is only to be expected now and again. I also saw a good few homeless people sitting about some of the streets who were obviously smoking some form of narcotic, such as crack cocaine, from home made pipes and although whenever I got too close to one of them they smelled awful due to their lack of personal hygiene, they never seemed to bother anyone.
I liked my time in Medellin and it is a city that I might like to visit again.