'She's watching the detectives': Cartagena, Colombia, tamer than you think

When we told people we were planning a week's vacation in Cartagena, Colombia, their eyes widened and their mouths hung agape.

"Really? Is it safe?" they gasped, as if it were still the era of the Cali Cartel and Pablo Escobar. Some who had been there remembered armed guards and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling the port and the hotels. That was, of course, 20 years ago. Nevertheless, even today, the most common Cartagena FAQ is still "Is it safe in Cartagena?"

"Yes, it's okay," we assured everyone. "Cartagena is a big tourist spot now. It's all perfectly safe, and we're staying in a luxury Airbnb apartment in the Centro Historico."

"Well, be careful anyway!"

We felt so safe there, in fact--so charmed by the brightly colored Cartagenan storefronts, turned-wood window bars, balconies dripping with bougainvillea, 17th-century walls, and multicolored pennants fluttering over the streets--that by our third day in town, we were craving a little real excitement.

A drug bust or two might be nice.

Bill observed that, if you travel enough, you find that the whole world puts on the same face for tourists. All that varies are the climate and the language.

Every spot has its persistent street vendors to whom you must keep saying, "No, thanks" in their native tongue. There are always street performers like the Invisible Man who haunts Cartagena's Plaza San Diego.  Horse-drawn carriages clop up and down the streets, carrying bored girls reading their cell phones. Even what we'd thought were spontaneous explosions of color on the city's exteriors were, we learned, prescribed by city regulation from a palette of approved hues and sequences.

It turned out that our biggest problem here was inadvertently scheduling our stay during Semana Santa (Holy Week), when Cartagena is so flooded with tourists that restaurant reservations become as necessary and hard to come by as they are during Southwest Florida's season.

Then, walking back from the bohemian Getsemani district one day, we noticed more than a few policia, street barriers, trucks full of police motorcycles, and a bomb squad van.

Here, at last, was some excitement!

When we happened upon a group of uniformed soldiers carrying guns, I could no longer contain myself.

"Que pasa?" I asked them, using two of my handful of Spanish words.

The soldiers replied that El Presidente would soon be driven along the route we were walking.

Not quite Pablo, but the president of Colombia was pretty good as far as excitement went. We didn't linger to see him chauffeured past us, but returned to the apartment to prepare for our usual quiet evening.

One of our favorite hangouts had become El Balcon, a restaurant with a balcony bar overlooking the action on Plaza San Diego below--street vendors accosting couples unfortunate enough to be sitting at street level, stray dogs making their nightly rounds, the Invisible Man hopping aboard carriages to startle the passengers.

A huge empanada stand pops up there every night, always drawing a throng hungry for its $1 empanadas, arepas de huevo, and carimanolas. It's been there, in the hands of the same family, for half a century, and never has anyone been made sick by its street food.

While we watched the crowd lining up for eats, suddenly the plaza was swarmed by policia. Something sure was happening, but we didn't know what.  Could this be the big bust we'd been waiting for?

Policia fanned out through the plaza, clearing away all the street vendors, muttering into walkie-talkies, checking their watches.

Then, a mountainous man wearing a civilian's plaid shirt and an unmistakable air of authority--clearly someone whom all the police and the empanada sellers knew and respected--appeared, overseeing the scene from the sidelines.  This, we felt, was a guy who could tell stories about "the day" in Colombia, but what American gringa would dare ask him? Not me.  

Anyhow, he meant business tonight.

We later learned that no drug bust was going down tonight. El Presidente, Ivan Duque, was here, too, dining with guests just on the other side of the plaza.  Protocol demanded the clearing of unsightly street vendors and other riff-raff, and the assurance of security for his visit.

The only street vendor who went relatively undisturbed, though the majority of his customers had scattered, was the empanada seller who, after all these years, appears to be above the law.

And, after surveying the plaza one last time, "Senor Montana" took advantage of being the only one in line for an empanada.

A day at the races

Horse racing, whether you win or lose, whether or not it's a Derby, is a damned fine day out.

U.S. race tracks, though, can be admittedly gritty affairs. There, one witnesses humanity at its least rational, rashly betting exactas, trifectas, perfectas, convinced of success in the face of nearly unwinnable odds. The floor and the stands end up littered with crumpled losses which thwarted bettors seem ashamed to even consign to a trash can.

When we go to the races, on the other hand, we like to think that we're making savvy analytical decisions. We carefully weigh past performance, speed, and lineage; odds that are okay but not outlandishly favorable; jockey reputation; the sprightly look of a horse as it's paraded around the paddock; and sometimes, yes sometimes, just the animal's name. "My Boy Bill" or "Runaround Sue"?  Both are sure things.

We do pretty well, considering. We stand at the railing, cheering our chosen animal on and grinning at the youngster standing next to us who's cheering for the same beast. We've been known to bet right along with a kid whom we happen to know is at his first race, because he's sure to have beginner's luck that will rub off on us. That works ... sometimes.

My favorite part: marching up to the counter to collect winnings, and being sure to return to the same cashier if it happens more than once. But cashiers rarely spare you a smile. They know the odds pretty well.

Sunday at the races in Prague isn't on every traveler's bucket list. In fact, many locals aren't even aware that it's a possible Thing To Do.

You take the train from the big city to a depot that's seen much better days and might very well be there only because of the Velka Chuchle race track. Velka Chuchle was founded in 1909, was submerged during the great Prague floods of 2013, and now flourishes every summer Sunday. During the winter, it's converted for snow sports. The Velka Chuchle station sign is clearly visible from the tracks where you arrive, but is faded almost to illegibility on the soot-covered depot facade. It seems you need to know only that you've gotten there. Apparently no one other than visitors to Velka Cuchle race track depart through the front of the no-frills station, which has only stairs to each side of the track--no ticket window, no restrooms, no benches. Most visitors seem to drive to the track anyway.

A short walk from the station, and you're immersed in the topsy-turvy world of Czech horse racing.

This Sunday was Children's Day, which only added to the festive diversity of the place. There were at least four different bounce houses, feeding of goats (they prefer grass), camel rides, and jumpy stuffed steeds on wheels, on which kids raced each other along the sidewalk. A six-foot-tall bear mascot padded about handing out goodie bags.

Aside from kids and dogs underfoot, the crowd was a zany Czech mix of stylish young clothes horses betting side by side with responsible parents and grizzled workmen in overalls. Half of them would have been at home at the seediest of U.S. greyhound tracks, while the other half appeared to be training to be seen at Ascot.

To accommodate them, three enterprising sales teams had set up little shopping stalls that were briskly selling out of flowery Derby hats, bottles of champagne, and, unaccountably, scented candles.

While we struggled to decipher the racing program, whose only recognizable bits included horses' names and numbers, and numbered races as well, we heard two young Czech gents conversing in English. We asked them for advice.

"Oh, he's the expert," one deferred. It shortly became clear that neither one of them knew much more than we did. "Er, that's the horse's name," the expert pointed out helpfully. "And those might be the odds."

When asked why they dressed so nattily for the races, they pointed out they were doing their part to elevate world perceptions of Czech racing to parallel Churchill Downs or Ascot, then listened intently as we explained the fine points of the Triple Crown.

A pleasant young woman at the Information counter was equally helpful. "Well, that's the horse's name," she began, then lapsed into bemused confusion.  We were clearly on our own here.

Eventually, the same way it happens at a U.S. racetrack, clarity emerges from just observing things--scrutinizing the boards to see which numbers change, which ones are the odds, which horses appear to be the track's own picks (three horses named across the bottom of each race's stats), the length of the races in meters, which became longer here as the day wore on--from 1200 to a mind-boggling 2400 meters on turf. The original Kentucky Derby was that long--12 furlongs, or 1.5 miles--but changed in 1896 to a more reasonable 10 furlongs, or 1.25.

At first we couldn't even see where or when the horses left the gate, it was so far away, toward the base of a range of distant mountains. But a large projection screen helped convey what was going on, as did loudspeakers that blared a running soundtrack of stirring music not that different from a hockey game's, interspersed with tense anticipatory ticking as the horses were stuffed into the gate.

That any of the races got off successfully was miraculous. Our first pick lived up to his name, which meant Thunderstorm, by trying to buck his rider off, and continued erupting in kicks and bucks right up until he was forcibly hauled into the gate. The track clearly didn't care to invest in friendly helper horses to calm these high-strung Bohemian thoroughbreds. They might have benefited from having the petting-zoo goats as friends, we figured.

But perhaps it's all part of the excitement that Czech races combine bucking broncos, horse-pulls, many female jockeys, and elaborate ride-arounds before they're finally off.

Our first bet, the nearly unprounounceable and recalcitrant Boor-zhka, ended up keeping his jockey aseat but came in third, despite the young lad next to us hollering, "Boor-zhka!! Boor-zhka!!" just as enthusiastically as we did.

Even Black Bard, chosen for name alone, didn't pay off. If his name had only been "Bart" instead, he might have.

Eating our way through Vienna

In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert celebrated Italian food, putting on 20 pounds while researching the first third of her book.

For a mere three days of our month-long stay in Europe, we celebrated Vienna, which involves food excesses just as much as lavish culture, art, music, parks, the heady scent of flowers and boxwood hedges, the clopping of horse-drawn carriages, and edifices larger than life.

"I need to take dieting more seriously," I thought, after we returned to Prague.

In Vienna, everything, including me, became bigger and grander than in Prague, and I had only its food to blame.

Lithe young things waft through the streets of Vienna in pastel-flowered frocks, much like they might have done a century ago. Sooner or later, they end up with a gelato held delicately in one hand, which adds not an ounce to their weightlessness. Elderly ladies, dressed to the nines in floppy hats, flowing silks, all their worldly jewelry, and elaborately perfect makeup, meet up in cafes for pastries and cappuccino. A greying older couple at Cafe de l'Europe--he in a stylish white fedora, tucking into a towering ice cream creation; she curled intently over a more modest sundae--enjoy another routinely pleasurable afternoon in the Innere Stadt.

Our first stop in Vienna was the stuffy, but historic, Cafe Schwarzenberg--the original center of Vienna's cafe society. It was by sheer accident that we ended up there, simply following our noses from our hotel near the Belvedere until we reached the Schubertring portion of the Ringstrasse. Cappuccinos and a cheese curd strudel floating in vanilla custard, served by a waiter older and more serious than time, introduced us to Vienna, where you can easily spend every day hopping from cafe to cafe, cappuccino to cappuccino.

From there we continued along the Ringstrasse, by now acutely aware that bicycles have the right of way, on green-painted pathways set aside just for them. Hapless pedestrians who bumble onto a green zone end up stranded, pinned and unable to move between aggressive flows of cyclists and other two-wheeled vehicles. One path, as we interpreted it, was designated for cyclists and pedophiles, so we steered clear of it entirely and ambled instead through the pedestrian-friendly Stadt Park.

We'd never heard of Tafelspitz, where we were headed next, but Viennese native Ruth Hofer had told us it wasn't to be missed. Many Viennese restaurants offer its boiled-beef specialty, but she recommended the ultimate Tafelspitz experience, at Plachutta at Wollzeile. There, even approval of reservations can take two days.

Boiled beef sounded so unappetizing at first that I nearly veered toward salmon or prawns instead, but quickly thought better of it. The suave Plachutta waiters present diners with a full-color, hand-illustrated card that not only describes Tafelspitz and its trimmings--fried potatoes, vegetables, chive sauce, horseradish applesauce, and black bread for the spreading of marrow--but also lays out detailed instructions for what to do with it all. They take so much trouble, how can you disappoint them by ordering fish?

First, your waiter will serve a soup of beef broth and root vegetables, ladled from a heated copper pot. Then, you spread bone marrow on your bread, season, and eat it. Finally, you plate your choice of beef cut, potatoes, and smooth, pureed spinach. The beef might look grey but is more mouthwatering and flavorful than the tenderest pate.

After dinner, we wandered the neighborhood, visiting a sweet shop that sold everything from the sublime to the silly (for seniors).

Bill was starting to get into the princely swing of things.

Steps away from our hotel, a historic biergarten served traditional Austrian fare, including bread dumplings the size of an infant's head and exquisite sauerkraut--both hot and cold, served alongside slabs of meat and on salad.

We began the next morning in Viennese style, with a sidewalk breakfast of rolls, jam, butter, cheese, ham, juice, and coffee.

During our trip to the Prater amusement park, we could have indulged in everything from pillow-sized sacks of cotton candy to hamburgers, hot dogs, and Mexican food. But we resisted.

We had a much better lunch planned, after a stop at the awe-inspiring Stephansplatz cathedral. Our goal? Cafe de l'Europe, another classic Viennese institution, noted for the excellence of its food, "spaghetti eis," and other treats.

I ordered that default of every American woman who fears she has overdone: Caesar salad with chicken. Bill had an equally thin carpaccio plate. Both were utterly delicious. I had never had such a delectable Caesar salad, all perfectly prepared, from the croutons to the tenderly seasoned and grilled chicken. 

I was savoring each bite, shooing away a fly that wanted to share my lunch, when I noticed a much larger luncheon guest--a garden snail, glistening and twitching its antennae from atop a piece of my lettuce.

I've always wanted to wave over a dignified Viennese waiter to indicate such a problem on the plate. Now was my chance. 

I beckoned grandly, gestured toward the offending creature, and watched the handsome server blanch. He was aghast, seized the salad immediately, and retreated with it, showing it to his colleagues along the way. All were scandalized, laughing uneasily. 

Not being prone to fainting, I joked, "At least it wasn't half a snail."

What did the cook have to say for himself? 

"I can't control for everything."  

So that's how I received a gratis salad from one of the pricier venues in Vienna, along with a complimentary "spaghetti carbonara" hazelnut spaghetti eis creation. 

I didn't complain.