[ Dec.2016 ] On the third day of our stay in the big city of Medellin in Colombia, we finally did the sightseeing tour here.
The first place we went was Catedral Metropolitana.
It was completed in 1931 and looked new.
According to Maria, our guide, this cathedral is the 7th largest in South America.
And the pipe organ here was made in Germany and the second largest in the continent.
In front of the cathedral was Bolivar Park and his equestrian statue was there.
Medellin is divided into 6 zones just like Bogota, from poor area to rich area.
She said that it is a commercial area around here and it is categorised as the zone 4, which means that this place was not poor or rich but in the middle.
But the men hanging around this area looked rather degenerate.
One thing I noticed during our driving in the city was that there were many shops with security grills and the shop assistant and the customers had to communicate through them.
We went to a similar shop in Santa Fe de Antioquia and that time I was satisfied myself because it was a goldwork shop and probably they needed the security.
But the shops I saw in Medellin were simple ones and they were selling snacks and bottles of juice and so on.
On the other hand, I saw some bigger open shops selling mobile phones and so on without any fences,too, so it may not mean that this city is so dangerous.
We went to Nutibara Hill, too.
There was a statue of an indigenous couple there.
This couple fought against the invading Spanish with poisonous arrows apparently.
We looked at the panorama of Medellin from the top of the hill whose height was about 80 metres.
It was not raining on the day, but it was humid and hazy, so the view was not very clear unfortunately.
One part of the hill was an area with many souvenir shops housed in traditional looking houses.
It was exactly the same as the one we went the day before near Piedra del Penol.
We bought some souvenirs for my Japanese friend, who stayed in Medellin nearly 20 years ago when this city was very dangerous.
