Day 4: First full day in Bogota — “Too much grownup talk”

What happened:

• Two city tours scheduled for today. Turned out to be a laughably ambitious plan…
• The morning started relatively well: awoke in our lovely Airbnb after a late arrival into Bogota last night. Headed out into our Zona G neighborhood; breakfast at Crepes y Waffles; then swung by Carulla Rosales grocery to pick up some essentials (cereal, milk, fruit, break, PBJ, Juan Valdez coffee for our machine at home.
• Tour #1 began with a 10am pickup by our Andres, our guide for the day. We took the Funicular up to Monserrate; toured the church and surrounding area; views of the massive, sprawling city are incredible; kids were amused by the 4 minute ride up the mountain, liked the super-sweet Aguapanela in the cafe but were bored by most everything else. Still, views were worth the visit.

• It was literally and figuratively downhill from there. Monserrate was followed by 2+ hours of a historical walking tour past Quinta de Bolivar — colonial residence to Simon Bolivar — and La Candelaria neighborhood including Av. Jimenez de Quesada, Carrera Septima and ending around Plaza Bolivar.
• This would have been pretty interesting for an adults-only group of history buffs. But Margaret and I are only mildly interested in the history of Bogota and needless to say, the kids didn’t give a shit.
• James was exhausted after the late night, generally out of sorts from the early days of our travel and bored by the tour. Not a good combo. He’s generally well-behaved for a 4 year old boy but on this day he was a terrorist. We can’t remember a day when he has behaved worse.
• We stopped for a way-too-late lunch at La Puerta de la Catedral. The food was actually really good — Margaret and I both had their house specialty Sancocho, a Columbian stew with chicken. But James continued to be embarrassingly terrible. We waved the white flag and cancelled the second tour. Poor Andres the guide (no kids) was a deer in headlights. I’m sure he was disgusted by James’s behavior and our increasing frustration with him; then also ashamed that we didn’t want to continue with the day’s activities.

A lesson learned the hard way:

• “Too much grownup talk.” This line from Willa summed up the day perfectly. She was actually really good given the amount of walking, the lack of food and the complete disinterest in what the guide was saying. Compared to James she was an angel.
• Margaret and I were in agreement since we started planning this trip: we don’t need to see every historical / political / religious landmark. And the kids certainly don’t care about them. Yet somehow we still planned this tour and had to endure 3 hours of frustration and embarrassment to convince ourselves that this isn’t how we want to spend the year. Thank you James for teaching us this lesson!