Thursday, August 18, 2011

Bogota, Colombia

  
Bogota is the third highest capital in South America and the city itself sits at altitude of about 8,500 feet high. When I first arrived to Bogota and I was dizzy because the air was so thin. I suggest everyone to take easy for a day or two days until your body gets used to the thin air. It is very cold because the city sits at high altitude and surrounding by beautiful mountains. Bogota has about 1,000 neighbors in the city and each neighbors shows variety of people. Bogota is still slowly recovering from bad drugs and street crime and developing new projects such as train stations and bus station. There are two different parts of Bogota are north and south. The North Bogota consider safe because it is well maintained for wealthy people and clean. The South Bogota consider not safe because it is a different scene from north to south. It is not safe in some areas unless you know what you want to do. I suggests everyone to take taxi at night not the one on the street for your safety. You have to call the company to give them the specific streets or address for taxi drivers to pick you up. That's what I was suggested by citizens of Bogota. Overall, Bogota is a beautiful city to travel.

Everyone should check out at Plaza De Bolivar because it was the first public monument built in the city. The square has different styles of architecture buildings. Each design varies from the most recent to Spanish era. 

The Catedral Primada was founded in 1538 and considered the largest church in Bogota. The neoclassical style was shown on exterior structures of church. The church was damaged due to earthquake, riots and poor foundations. The interiors of church have a huge space for circulation but it has a little ornamentation details on wall to ceiling.
 

Iglesia Museo de Santa Clara is one of Bogota's most richly decorated churches. It was built in 1629 and 1674 and still runs by government. The structure features a barrel vault coated in golden floral motifs looking down over walls entirely covered in paintings and statues of saints. I couldn't take a picture of interiors structure due to mass in the church. It's very stunning and beautiful!


The Capitolio Nacional was built by English architect Thomas Reed in 1847. The style is neoclassical and still use for seat of Congress but the political has impact the process of the construction work until 1926. 


Museo Botero is an excellent museum for people who have an interests to look at famous artist of Fernando Botero work. He have done many different variety of sculptures, paintings and drawings. The museum have two floors filled most of his work like chubby hands, oranges, women, children, birds, etc on paintings. I recommends everyone to go and look at it because it helps you to understand how his works involves with a different compositions and materials that he used on paintings and drawings.




Museo Del Oro is a famous gold museum because the exhibition shows different varieties of gold like necklaces, crowns, sculptures, earrings and bracelets. The museum contains more than 55,000 different pieces of gold and other materials from pre Hispanic cultures in Colombia. It shown how the pieces were used for, how women of the Zenu in the pre-Columbian played more important roles in worship and how gold was used in rituals. The museum have three floors filled with different stories of each regions and understand about their culture by how people used for beauty and rituals. 

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