Our Journey to Adoption: Weekend in Villa de Leyva

Freddy picked us up on Saturday am and we headed out for Villa De Leyva. We have heard so many great things about this town so we were happy to go and visit even if it was for just 2 days. It is a Spanish colonial town full of white buildings with tiled roofs, the streets are all cobblestone and there are many restaurants and shops. There are beautiful court yards and buildings that are very old. The central plaza is huge surrounded by a large church and many colonial buildings. There are 2 routes to take to get there so Freddy thought that we should take the long way around stopping in several small towns one day and take the freeway back the other day. There were several beautiful churches we wanted to visit along with going to Raquira which is a small town full of handicrafts and known for pottery. We were able to find a lot of nice things to bring back home with us. Freddy decided to stay over night so that he could show us around both days. As always he was giving us the tour and was a wealth of knowledge about the history of all the towns we visited. We took our time getting there as it is about 3 hours outside of Bogota. We arrived in Villa de Leyva around 4pm and got settled in to our hotel that is right near the main square. The town is very old as is the hotel we were staying at but very nice with a beautiful court yard, spa, and restaurant. We ventured out to do some sight seeing, shopping and find dinner. Freddy has been here several times so was able to recommend some good places to eat with live music. We decided to meet up with Freddy the next day after lunch so we could do some exploring in the morning and shopping. We knew we wanted to visit the ostrich farm, the mud house and the fossil museum for sure. At the farm for ostriches we learned all about them, and got to go in to the pen and feed them. They are big and can be very assertive finding the food. They are very tall and their necks are kind of snake like so just when you thought they were not looking you would look up and there they would be. We laughed so hard many times and have a lot of good video! It was hilarious! We would highly recommend anyone visiting to check out this great little town! We were excited that we were able to visit and that there was not a strike. It was a great ending to an amazing 8 week visit in this beautiful country. It is going to be very hard to leave. Tonight was another tough goodbye as we said thank you to our amazing friend and driver Freddy. We are so going to miss him. He has been SO SO good to us. We have shared a lot of laughs together and we all grew to love him! We told him if he comes to the US he needs to tell us so we can go and visit him. We ended our weekend with a great trip to Teriyaki as a goodbye dinner.

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Numbers 6:24-26