Caracas

13. May: I awake sometime late in the morning, not feeling much better. It's time to take the next antibiotic tablet but need to eat something first. The checkout time is 13:00, so I wake Annewien and we groggily walk downstairs to find some breakfast. There is breakfast available in the hotel, though it is very expensive and meager. The receptionist lady has changed since last night, but she still hasn't sorted out our problems, so we go back to our room and sleep till 12:30. Annewien showers and we pack our bags, since we don't want to continue staying in this expensive and poor-value hotel any longer. Downstairs, the hotel manager is called by the receptionist and to my relief he says everything is ok. It seems that the travel agency had not informed the hotel about our arrival. He is very friendly and allows us to deposit our backpacks at the hotel for the day.

We walk down 'Sabana Grande', which is a large and long pedestrian shopping street. It is Sunday, and there are lots of people walking on the streets around us. The hotel manager had warned us to be very careful, to always stick to the main road, never to ever heed anyone who would try to grab one's attention or try pulling one into a shop. Caracas is very dangerous, he said. Somehow I can't believe anything bad could happen to us in daylight, with so many people around. We have a fast-food lunch at 'Wendy's', it was cold inside, with a busy a/c, it's uncomfortable for me with my cold.

We reach 'Plaza Venezuela' and in that region we check out five hotels recommended by the Lonely Planet guide. We settle for 'Hotel Cristal', take a room and sleep till the evening. I am sick. The other hotels we saw were either poor value for money or extremely shabby and probably 'love hotels'. When we get up, we walk down Sabana Grande again (it is dark by now) to Hotel Palace Plaza, get our backpacks and Annewien's valuables from it's safe and take a taxi back (very expensive at 4500Bs!) to Hotel Cristal. We unload our stuff in our room and we're back to sleep.

It seems I'm not getting any better, despite the antibiotics. For dinner we have biscuits, Coke and some Hershey's chocolates which we had bought on Sabana Grande.
 

Cristal Hotel logo on bed sheets, the place where we stayed	Sabana Grande shopping street from our hotel balcony

Polar Beer ad from our balcony	Early morning Caracas view

An antique pickup	Caracas time

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