August 21--Walking around our Chico neighborhood and to the mall

The area that we are staying in is called El Chico neighborhood. We walked around the area today for about 4 1/2 hours. This included time in the mall and grocery shopping. It was a great day, but ended up a little rainy. The streets are incredibly bumpy and difficult for strollers, but we managed!

A local vendor. These guys are on almost every street corner. Like we mentioned before, the streets remind us of New York and the parks of Boston. It is very much a big city here and very crowded.

Every now and then, we will see a horse and cart on the busy streets. Lucia loves this.

Another vendor. Notice the yellow cabs and motor scooter. They are everywhere. People can only drive their cars on certain days of the week in order to cut down on pollution, which is quite bad here. So cabbing it is necessary b/c there are no restrictions on cabs.

In front of Andino mall. It is a very big mall with three stories. We went to Juan Valdez again!

For lunch, we took Lucia to McDonalds!!! What a treat :) 

When we left the mall, it was drizzling and we had about a 20 minute walk ahead of us. We put a grocery bag over Silas's legs and my sweater over the top of the stroller. He managed to sleep through the whole ordeal. Lucia hovered under her sweatshirt and hood.

By the time we got back to near our hotel, the rain had stopped, so we decided to go grocery shopping at Carrulla.

I love the mangos here. They are much tastier than the ones from Bi-Lo.

A flower stand in front of the grocery store. After grocery shopping, we went to a great book store that is on this same street. They have a little area for kids that Lucia enjoyed while Brian and looked at books about Colombia. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were satisfied with a wonderful day of adventure. We can say that we truly are enjoying our time here!