This Global Home | Day 23: Colombia
I'm Mary, the blogger behind Bambinos Without Borders, a family travel blog which aims to encourage parents to travel with their kids in order to teach tolerance and global empathy. I most enjoy planning out our family’s future trips, listening to Christmas music, and a good glass of red wine. I'm currently living in Bogotá, Colombia with my two bambinos and diplohusband.Moving into a high-rise apartment in Bogotá, Colombia was a far cry from the three-story house with an orchard I lived in at my previously. But like most things in this lifestyle, you get used to what you have pretty quickly.Overall, my apartment has three bedrooms, four bathrooms, two balconies, living room, a den/playroom, office, dining room, kitchen, laundry room, and maids quarters. We had just received our household good shipment just one week before this post was written. No artwork hangs on the walls, boxes of packing paper and stuff to get rid of are stacked in corners, and piles of stuff yet to be organized sit atop desks and dressers. It was most important to my sanity to “finish” the living spaces first although I’m sure they’ll never truly be finished. Eh... c’est la vie.I live on the eleventh floor in an area of Bogotá known as Rosales, just on the northern end of Zona G, an area of town packed full of cafes, cozy bakeries, and trendy restaurants. My building sits at the base of the mountain range adjacent to the city, and without a doubt, the best feature of my apartment is the view. On one side I look down upon the endless urban sprawl of over 8 million people, on the other, I look up to green, misty mountains, whose peaks are often hidden by hazy white clouds. On sunny mornings, I will take my computer and a cup of coffee to work on my balcony overlooking the city and feel that life can’t get much better than this.Connect with me: BlogInstagramFacebookPinterest
When you walk through my front door, the apartment is split into two parts. To the left are the office and bedrooms, to the right the living spaces and kitchen.
My living room is small and acts as a passage to the dining room. There is a large wall with a fireplace that divides this room from the den/playroom further to the right. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent simply looking out that window at either the city below or the stars above. Some nights I can watch several firework shows happening at the same time right from my couch.
We set up our entertainment on the opposite wall from the window. This is the first time I have incorporated removable wallpaper into my decor and it will certainly not be the last!!
To the right of the living room is a small den area which we have made the kids’ playroom. It’s quite an unremarkable space and half the challenge was finding places for all their toys. This room does open up to a larger balcony.
This is my favorite place to sit on sunny days. I feel both a part of and removed from the city at the same time.
Our dining room is another small, enclosed room off the living room with a swinging door to the kitchen on the left. The most stunning feature of this room obviously is the large corner windows from which (in the daylight) you can see both high up the mountains and far across the city.
This picture was taken from that very corner. At over 8,600ft elevation, Bogotá is often cold and often wet. This day was a fairly common, cloudy Bogotá day.
My kitchen, again, is a fairly small and awkwardly shaped space. It has forced me to finally get rid of so many unneeded gadgets, redundant utensils, and other things that I’ve literally never used but never had a reason to get rid of. Small apartment: here’s my reason. I must genuinely say though that my favorite feature of my, ahem..
cozy
, kitchen is the natural light from the extra large window.
And this is where the post-moving chaos begins. This office area is to the left of the front door and is a landing to all the bedrooms. This side of the apartment is still full of boxes and piles of random things waiting to be put away… one of these days.
My kids share a bedroom which has worked out very well for them so far. I have yet to hang pictures on their walls but it’s bound to be adorable in time.
The master bedroom is again, cozy, but actually one of the larger rooms in the house. It’s currently being used as the “stuff to get rid of” room as you can see by the wall of boxes to the right.
Our second balcony is off of the master bedroom. In time, I plan to put a table and chairs out here so I can drink coffee while gazing up at the beautiful green mountains.
And while the view from above is the main selling point of our apartment, the bathtub in the master bathroom is probably the next best thing. As it turns out, not many apartments in Bogotá are equipped with a bathtub so we made sure to request one on our housing survey. Moral of the story: ask and you shall receive in plenty.____________________ Pin it to win it! (Winning life not anything monetary).
