First look at Medellin – November 2018
We left Peru in November and flew north to Medellin, Colombia for a month-long visit to this bustling city and several surrounding towns. Most tourists spend 3 to 7 days in this metropolitan area (valley) of about 4 million people and 147 square miles. Our philosophy is to visit fewer places in a country for longer periods of time.
Street in Laureles area 
Iglesia San Joaquin in Laureles area
We chose to visit Medellin this time of year because of the extensive and internationally known Christmas light displays throughout the city. (More about that and lots of pictures, of course, in future posts.) We rented a very small 17th floor apartment in the Laureles area, which is in the west central part of the city and a 10 minute walk from the nearest metro train station. The people of Medellin are very proud of their extensive metro system of trains, buses, and cable cars. It is very clean (no graffiti or litter to be found) and well maintained to carry the 425.000 daily passengers. First established in 1995, the Medellin Metro is the only urban train system in the country.
Metro train leaving the Estadio station 
One of four metro cable lines
Most of our travel around the city was on the metro system or on foot. One afternoon while walking to the supermarket we overheard a tourist theorize that there are many shoe stores in Medellin because people’s shoes wear out quickly from walking around the city so much since they do not have their own cars. Yes, there are many, many shoe stores (plus lots of purse and clothing stores) in this city. But, a very large number of people use the public transportation system so their shoes are not wearing out that quickly. Once in a while we hired a taxi or Uber driver using the easy-to-navigate apps (yes, even a taxi app) available Medellin.