Caracas to Paris

27. May: This was the day to return for Zurich! The Air France flight was in the evening, so we had the whole day to see a bit of Caracas. We wanted to see some museums, I wanted to buy some pirated CD's and some local handicraft-souvenirs. We head off to two museums, among them Museo de las bellas Artes. There are some nice paintings and local art, including nañve art, to be seen. Especially Museo de las Bellas Artes is set in a beautiful house with a nice interior, and it is possible to climb to the roof to get a great view of Caracas. There were some local stands outside, and I buy a painted religious figure carved out of wood.


Last view over Sabana Grande	Our Suite in Hotel Cristal


Caracas Skyline from Museo de las Bellas Artes	Whole Venezuela seems to be permanently being "Remodeled"


Caracas Highrises	Caracas blocks

We have lunch at a Burger King restaurant and then continue off in the direction of the Cathedral/Capitolio to see if I could find some CD sellers. Today is Sunday and there are hardly any to be seen. We walk quite a fair distance and at last I find one where I buy a couple of CD's, including some typical Venezuelan music, which has a peculiar 3/4-tempo to it. The larger souvenir stores are all closed. We walk around a bit and see a Tango-show demonstration on one of the squares! What a place to suddenly see Tango! A bit further on we see some locals dancing on the street to music.


Colombian art	Venezuelan Art: Martina Hingis next to Oscar de Leon and Ruben Blades


Venezuelan Art: Famous Armadillo	Art


Naive art	Naive art


Naive art	Naive art. Venezuelan women do actually wear this kind of gear on the beach


Naive art	Museo de las bellas artes


Garden art: This piece actually sounded like crickets, glowed and flashed when it detected a person nearby	Caracas Sunday dancing in the street

We take the Metro back to Sabana Grande, I would like to see if we could find some more CD's or handicrafts, but there is hardly anything to be seen and time is running out. We go back to Cristal Hotel to fetch our bags and take a taxi to the airport.

The Air France flight is late and we would miss our connecting flight to Zurich. Annewien tries to convince the check-in official that he should book us on a connecting flight with another airline, since we'd have to wait quite a while with Air France. He needs to check with his superior, but it's not possible. He's very friendly all the while. We get some vouchers for a sandwich, so we get it, then check the handicrafts stores for souvenirs. Annewien would like a hammock, but the cheapest ones are around 100$ and she decides that it isn't worth it. I buy a long brightly Jesus-Figure out of wood, similar to the ones we had seen on our trip to Pico Aguilar from Merida. At 35$, it isn't cheap. At last our plane is ready for boarding and we take off. We're on a large Airbus A340 and we've managed to get seats right the front of the section, right in front of the movie screen. This gave us a lot of legroom and was good for Annewien's legs. Air France is quite good, food and drink as well. The flight was otherwise uneventful.