There haven't been too many trip reports lately, so here is one from a trip I took with my novia to Medellín back in January.
I don't have hotel or agency info since I didn't use either. We stayed at her abuela's apartment in Laureles, a working class barrio, I don't know the strata. She is a sweet older woman. Walking around the area was no problem during the day, we took taxis at night. Medellín has several nice upscale malls, Unicentro in Laureles, we also went to the San Diego C.C., a nice open air mall similar to Chipichapi in Cali. One of the nicest is El Tesoro, built on the side of the mountain high up in Poblado. Several posters had spoken about nothing but Poblado, it is essentially the Beverly Hills of Medellín, we had a much better time in other parts of town, and believe me, the beauties are everywhere. Hang out at a metro staion for a while...I digress.
The metro, an above ground rail system, is cheap and fast,and pretty nice, at one end there is a cable car lift to the top of the mountain, with slums below, from the bottom to the top. Not a bad way to spend part of the day. We then took the metro into Medellín centro, again, no problems walking around. We went to the Museo de Antiquia for the Botero exhibit, then walked up to the brick Cathedral, which was closed, on the way back we stopped in a flea market for some souveniers, I needed a Medellín shot glass.
The only restaurant that stood out was a mom and pop place where her sobrina worked, we went to see her, it was in Estadio, near the futbol stadium, either Carrera or Calle 80, I don't remember which,
we had excellent steaks , and a couple beers each for about 45 mil pesos, about 20 bucks total. One thing that stuck out, when the customers call the waitresses, they called them by the name "niña", I hadn't heard that in Cali.
As far as the weather goes, a little cooler, and much cooler up in Poblado at night, and the feel from the city, I liked Medellín better than Cali.
