Medellín - Our Favorite City in Colombia

We loved all of the places we visited during the three months we spent in Colombia, but we especially loved Medellín.

Interestingly, we spent most of our time in one section of the city, El Poblado. El Poblado is actually a fairly large area, with two main components. There is the commercial district around calle 43A which is full of office buildings, apartments, restaurants, los centros comerciales (malls) with high-end stores and coffee shops. The side-streets are lined with tall trees full of leaves. Every Sunday calle 43A is closed to traffic for most of the day but remains open for walkers, runners and bikers. The people of Medellín love their dogs. On Sunday they dress them up for their walks down calle 43A.

The second section is around Parque Lleras. This area is a little more "hip" with smaller hostels and hotels, restaurants, bars, more coffee shops and of course, tattoo shops. Our favorite coffee shop in Medellín is called Cafe Pergamino and it has several locations around the city.

We stayed in two different hotels during several weeks in Medellín. Hotel 574 is an excellent, quiet and small boutique hotel. It is a short walk to either of the main sections of el Poblado. It is very popular, so if you are interested you need to book a couple of months in advance.

We also stayed for a couple of weeks in LeBlón Hotel-Suites. This hotel is in the more upscale area and is a high-rise. It was also a high-quality hotel with a great breakfast and incredible views of the city and surrounding mountains.

The city has many other sites and areas worth a visit including Comuna 13, Parque Arvi and Plaza Botero. The weather in the city is near perfect, at least it was during our visit. We had a day or two with little spurts of rain, but not enough to disrupt. The temperature hovered around 72-75(F) during the day. We felt very safe wherever we were in el Poblado.

More photos from around Medellín below:

Our top restaurant in el Poblado was la Matriarca.