Day 11: Lunch at La Vitrola, a carriage ride (video!) and popsicles at La Paleteria

by Ted · Published January 17, 2019 · Updated January 18, 2019

Our last full day in Cartagena.

Chill morning:

Nice waking up with no commitments except a lunch reservation.
Breakfast in the hotel again.

Willa’s breakfast question: “Why is the plate so big when the eggs are so small?”

Then walked to the wall at the edge of the Old City. Margaret broke out the new Sony camera for the first time (black and white pic below) while kids played with bubbles (part of the loot they “discovered” at Castillo yesterday)

Stopped by Abacus Books and Coffee. Grabbed coffees and a couple postcards so the kids could do their writing exercise for the day. Willa wrote a note to her 1st B class while James addressed his to grandma Lobsy.

Rested in the shade on a bench in Bolivar Plaza. Highlight: an incredible plate of freshly chopped tropical fruit purchased from a woman at a little table. Lowlight: A pigeon shit on Margaret’s sleeve.

Browsed a market, bought a clever little logic puzzle from a stand selling only wooden games.

Lunch at La Vitrola: as good as advertised.

We had 3 or 4 people generously write extensive lists of recommendations for Bogota and Cartagena. I think La Vitrola was the only restaurant on every list. Now we know why.
The NY Times describes it as “the culinary kingpin of Cartagena. Part jazz club, part lounge, part highly touted restaurant… it channels old Havana.”
They don’t even take kids for dinner reservations so we opted for lunch. It wasn’t busy and there was no live music but still very cool. (My #1 Cartagena regret will be leaving without being there at 10pm on a Saturday night. Next time.)
Service, food and mojitos were all excellent. And even though they don’t allow kids for dinner the waitstaff was super attentive to them at lunchtime.

Afternoon: shopping math games, swim and finally a carriage ride:

Margaret and Willa hit the markets while James and I stayed at the hotel and played some math games.

When they got back we hit the rooftop pool for a swim.

The last 3 nights we’ve been falling asleep to the memorable and somehow comforting clippity-clop of horses pulling carriages of tourists past our hotel window. We promised the kids we would take a ride and we were pleasantly surprised. Beautiful way to see the old city, especially at sunset. Pulled together a quick video to give a sense for the experience.

The carriage ride was the first appearance by James’s mealworm on the Sullivan Family Adventure. Regular readers may remember his creation story from an earlier Instagram post. Starting a mealworm tag.

Balcony pizza followed by popsicles:

Shared a pizza on a balcony overlooking plaza Fernandez Madrid with a gorgeous Caribbean breeze. James was intrigued by the YouTube music videos playing inside.

We then fulfilled another promise and hit the highly recommended La Paleteria for fruit popsicles.

Willa is a popsicle lover to begin with (even over ice cream) and was obsessed with her choice of tropical fruit with real strawberries, kiwi and mango inside.

5 days and 4 nights was the right amount of time in Cartagena. Really fun place, looking forward to an grownups-only return, but now ready to move on.

Tomorrow: early afternoon flight back to Bogota, connecting to Lima where we meet LOBSY for 10 days in Peru. Excited!