Villa de Leyva, the grand finale

If you've missed the initial six-post-long photo bomb of our trip north of Bogota, here are the previous posts from our trip to Villa de Leyva over Easter/Spring break:

swimming

part I (Villa de Leyva at night and our hotel)

part II (the Ostrich Farm) 

part III (Dinosaur Park, more swimming and one of the best pizza joints in Colombia)

part IV (Villa de Leyva Plaza Mayor, family pictures)

part V (lemonades and lattes on the plaza)

Since I recognize the very real chance that you're all bored beyond words of all the pictures from this trip, I'll keep this post low on narration. These are mostly pictures of the colonial architecture that Villa de Leyva is known for -notably the church- along with a few shots of some of the people.

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By the time we were done our little coffee break at the plaza while waiting for the shops to open, the sun was out and blazing, the square was filling up... and the boys were cranky and in no mood to shop. So Peter took the three of them up to the car while I head a few blocks over to the yarn shop I'd been anxious to peak into.

The wool and other fibre in that store were incredible! All hand carded, spun and dyed. Amazing stuff. They sold many hand-knitted items (some drool-worth sweaters, bags and rugs) as well as the yarn itself. I'd chosen several balls of yarn to buy, with dreams of sweet baby girl knitted things swirling away in my head. The  problem was that none of the skeins were priced. All were weighed on a somewhat sketchy and not-so-accurate looking hanging scale. 

I also have GRINGO practically stamped across my forehead.

Luckily (it turns out), my credit card wouldn't work when I went to pay... good thing, since the total was around $400! Yikes. I'm thinking providence saved me from getting more than a wee bit ripped off there as I hadn't chosen that much wool, but would've had no way to "argue" the price with them. I still thinking longingly back to that amazing wool, but am thankful to have not gotten fleeced (*snort*).

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I met up with Peter and the boys, we said goodbye to Villa de Leyva and hit the road in search of the pottery town of Raquira. 

We had a map. 

We had a GPS. 

We still got lost.

And we got stuck behind these guys...

After a 40 minute detour of sorts, we did manage to get on the proper highway, headed in the proper direction, and eventually made it to Raquira. By this time, the boys were tired, hungry, even crankier, and not at all interested in getting out a poking around shops. Even amazing shops like the ones lining the streets of this neat little town.

So I got all of 20 minutes to race around with my camera and snap some shots while half-heartedly looking for a sandwich shop or something similar. In the end, I did get some interesting pictures, but only got to buy a Pepsi and a lemonade.

People, I could've spent a whole day wandering around this place. *sigh* But the boys had all come down with bad colds while we were in Villa de Leyva and they just really needed to get home. Their needs came first.

I'm such a good mom.

Cause seriously, check out this place!

This concludes our trip to Villa de Leyva. I'll return you to your regularly scheduled blog full of stories of my kids supreme silliness, complaints about this awful cold (that threatens to be with me until the end of this pregnancy... or the end of time), belly pics and anxiety over name choice.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.