Doing nothing in a cute small town

A few days ago we went to Villa de Leyva; I hadn’t gone there for 8 years, or more. We had worked for 9 days nonstop, nine, and I was exhausted. I’m not one of those people who procrastinate, I work 8 solid hours completely focused every one of my working days. 

I don’t like improvised trips (or planned from a day to the next one) but this time I took my chance, we only went for 2 days anyways and I needed to get out of town and specially get away from that delusional, overwhelming and unpersonal world called Internet, which I am feeding right now!

Villa de Leyva is a cute small town in Boyaca, Colombia, 3 hours away from Bogotá, that most Colombians adore without a question, as most of the things Colombians do: without a question. The town is definitely fabulous, but in the low season, without the crowds, drunks and crazed people everywhere, I honestly don’t understand people who love going to crowded places for vacation, even if you work office schedules.

So, we drove off on Tuesday morning and we hadn’t noticed our mobile internet wasn’t actually working; fortunately we had 3 or 4 hotels’ addresses as screen captures to check in which one we would be staying in. On the way there the road and the landscapes were beautiful, as usual, is not that surprising here in Colombia, and we ended up choosing La Posada de San Antonio hotel in the middle of the town.

The hotel ended up being simply wonderful. A small hotel in a colonial house, full of colonial details and decoration, not just the architecture as hotels there usually are, there were plenty of colonial decorative details. The owners have known how to decorate this hotel minutely with eclectic furniture, vintage objects, trunks, flower pots and flowers everywhere, lamps all over the place and a lot of colonial-style paintings, all of the balconies, roofs and lots of furniture made with rustic wood. There was a marvelous and cozy reading room with old books to the ceiling, lots of chairs to sit on, a silver tea set and a huge fireplace: everything a reader dreams of in a rainy cold afternoon. 

And the room we stayed in: speechless. Absolutely charming, with a small fireplace, a balcony with a view to the mountains, the hotel’s courtyard and colonial tile roofs, also filled with perfectly thought details that create a very romantic and cozy atmosphere. I must congratulate the owner of this hotel if the decoration is her work (I think so) since it’s perfect, without being overelaborate nor ostentatious, but cozy, romantic, welcoming and pleasant.

After a cup of coffee in this perfect balcony and having some lunch around (I don’t do “gastronomic tourism”, haha), we went for a walk around town. The sky was overcast and grey, which I found fits the town perfectly because all the colonial houses are white and the streets are cobbled, so the light was diffuminated by the clouds and it fell softly like a reflector on the white architecture. We found a lot of beautiful things: chocolate stores, pastry shops, tea houses, all kinds of restaurants (and all of them pretty expensive! LOL), souvenirs and crafts shops, bars… afterwards we went to the town square and had a beer while we watched the rain pour in this huge cobbled square with the mountains in the background.

After getting hysterically soaked with the rain (I hate getting wet by the rain) we arrived back to the hotel and lit up the fireplace of the room for hours and hours; haven’t you sit in front of a fire for hours, thinking about nothing, just watching the fire and listening to the wood crackle, and talking about anything with the person beside you? Or just staying there silent? It’s really meditative and relaxing, I cannot recommend it enough, it’s my paradise.

The next morning I couldn’t believe it. We had our breakfast taken to the room, first, because I feel like I’ve been staying on AirBNBs my whole life, without room service, second, because the balcony of the room with its little table and two chairs, and the light coming from the mountains in the morning really asked for an awesome breakfast in the table. After enjoying such an unusual moment in our travels we went walking around town again, this time under a blue sky, and I saw so many bougainvilleas and flowers that I was really happy and I kept on taking loads of photos with my phone because Villa de Leyva is soo beautiful right now! and because after a difficult time deciding I chose not to take my DSLR  ):).

There is a lot of things to do around Villa de Leyva but honestly we didn’t want to get in the car again to go someplace else; we just wanted to do nothing, strolling, take cell phone photos, see what we found, complain about the cobbled streets, getting sunburnt or rain soaked, have some coffee and talk with the coffee shop owner, or have a beer in the square, and look to the infinite inside the fire, or in the mountains, or of the rain, do nothing, rest.