From friends, I had heard a lot about Bogota, a city in Colombia of a thousand faces and mixtures in flavors, colors, music sounds and textures. I thought I would be able to visit all the places worth seeing in Bogota in a one-day city tour, but after I contacted Hansa Tours through internet, a specialized firm in receptive tourism in Bogota, I clearly saw that it would be impossible to tour the city in a single city tour. Hansa Tours kindly gave me all the information about all the possible city tours that could be made in Bogota and that Hansa Tours offers, such as the Historical Bogota City Tour, the Religious Bogota City Tour and the Ecological City Tour among others.

Thus, I programmed the Historical Bogota City Tour, which includes, in first place, a visit to La Candelaria district, a famous place for its colonial building, and then a sightseeing tour by the Bolivar Square, where you can admire the National Capitol, the Palace of Justice, the 20^th of July Museum House, the Primada Cathedral and the Nariño Palace (home of the president of Colombia). I also chose the Bogota Night City Tour, which offers a visit to Monserrate, a typical church standing in the top of a hill belonging to the Andes, and that can be reached by cable car, funicular, or on foot by its hundreds of steps. From that wonderful place, you can get a magnificent view of the Colombian capital at night. I also decided to book the shopping-in-Bogota City Tour because I got interested about the handicrafts, pre-hispanic craftwork, leather goods and jewelry, which can be bought at very convenient prices.  

Upon my arrival at El Dorado, an excellent well-organized airport with some of the busiest air traffic on the continent, I was met by a very kind and smiling English-speaking Hansa Tours guide, who had a board clearly visible from the distance, with my name on it. He was going to take me on my first city tour in Bogota. According to the weather reports given to me on the plane, the afternoon was going to be very cool, as it was summer time and it hadn’t rained in a week. My first city tour was starting, my excitement made me speechless but very, very happy. We took El Dorado Avenue on our way to the hotel, passing by a monument honoring Queen Elizabeth and Christopher Columbus. We went by El Salitre, a modern zone which has two shopping malls (there is a Hansa Tours City Tour that includes shopping malls). Afterwards we took the NQS Avenue, where I saw for the first time Transmilenio, the impressive mass transportation system of Bogota, with its very crowded, red articulated buses that cross the whole city from one end to the other.  

I was not in the mood for waiting before my second city tour in Bogota. So I went to the hotel located in the north of Bogota, and after checking in, I put on some more comfortable clothes… my second city tour in the streets and in the soul of Bogota was just about to begin!