Medellin First Impressions

One day in Medellin and i am so in love with this city. It is not quite as hot as Cali, but never the less warm, very warm. It is not quite as big as Bogota, no Transmileno, the Metro has so much more elbow room than those red buses. Speaking of the metro, the recently built new cable cars and it was interesting to see the economic status of the families change as we rode the cable cars up in to the mountains, where some young little man fresh out of school asked me if i spoke Spanish, i replied yes (tiny fib) and then he proceed to ask me how i feel about his neighborhood, good little guy. The city built this gigantic library, very modern and progressive, that the king and queen actual came from Spain to see it sitting a top the hills towering over the city in a poor (but not the poorest) neighborhood. In combination with the cable car, the library seems to draw all different types of people to the area and the neighborhood, to spend money and interact, and at least in the small radius between the cable car stop and the library you feel very much apart of a safe, vibrant, lively neighborhood, although its a small sample size. Plus the amount of people that use these cable cars is amazing, when we rode them back down it was the teeth of rush hour and the metro train stopped and everybody, everybody, got off the train and rushed up the stairs in an attempt to avoid the line, easily 100+ people, but the cable car moves constantly so the line doesn't take THAT long. It is interesting to see how it has changed people in that particular neighborhoods lives, no longer requiring the use of several different buses and traveling up the steep mountain side on long dangerous windy roads with crazy drivers. All and all the first day was wonderful, i am just touching on a couple of things, in an Internet cafe, more or less, and i have the city to see, so expect a more detailed account of events on Sunday evening. Ciao!