Caracas Has Character

Venezuelans are amazingly hospitable people. If you ever visit, you should do all you can to spend some time with a local, as they will introduce the city to you in a way you would never discover on your own. My customers drove me all over the city, despite the horrendous traffic. My favorite part of the driving tour was when Ernesto took me up to Pueblo de el Hatillo, a colorful little colonial-style neighborhood. It's hilly narrow streets are filled with great shopping during the day and fun bars and restaurants at night, with a young crown. Another great area to be for nightlife is Las Mercedes -- it is full of discos and restaurants. Venezuelans are the only South Americans who are passionate about baseball but could care less about soccer, and I enjoyed talking about the Mets and the Yankees with them. Even though I was in Caracas for only two days, I felt like I would like to return, if only to spend more time with my local friends to leisurely tour the city.

Quick Tips:

Definitely have your hotel book you car or taxi service from the airport to the hotel. I hailed a cab myself, and scared myself half to death as it is not extraordinarily clear who are the legal cabs and who are the gypsy cabs. Definitely try and change some money at the airport before you head into the city, because the hotels charge extravagant rates to exchange cash and will not pay the cab driver for you and then bill your account. During the day you can get cash from the major banks' machines all around the city.

Best Way To Get Around:

No matter where you are going or how you are getting there, in Caracas it is safe to double the time you think it will take you to get there. The traffic will give you pause -- it's a long narrow city confied by mountains on both sides, so all the cars are forced onto the few roads that can run in that valley. Cabs are not expensive at all, and if it's not rush hour are probably the best way to go. The taxi drivers are very kind, especially if you speak even a small bit of Spanish. (One of mine told me all about his family and neighborhood. Baseball is also always a good topic.) Note that at night, drivers only pause at red lights, they do not wait for the lights to turn green because while they are waiting someone could try and carjack or mug the driver. (Caracas is after all a 3rd-world city.) I would have no qualms about taking the subway during the day, but expect it to be jam-packed. I would not recommend the buses as it would be hard to know where to get off.

This has nothing to do with whether or not you should stay here, so I will note it first to getit out of the way: the young men who work at this hotel are mostly drop-dead gorgeous. That, for me, was the best part of staying at this Hilton.

The room itself was a typical Hilton hotel room, with nothing exceptional about it, perhaps it was a little bigger than normal. The amenities were the standard for the business traveler -- minibar, data port, room service (poor). I did have a nice view of the parque Nacional el Avila and its mountains.

The front desk, porter and concierge services were very good. Everyone was helpful and polite, and their English was quite good. This is the newest luxury hotel in Caracas, and it has an abundance of services on its lobby levels. There are numerous restaurants, a very cool cyber cafe which doubles as a hang out and the business center, a branch office of American Airlines, a book shop, fitness center, pools, and facilities for conventions and performances. The hotel is enormous -- it has 780 rooms -- and I found myself spending time in the lobby bar just so I did not feel so isolated. This could be more a casualty of being a business traveler rather than any fault of the hotel, but I did have the feeling that the hotel was not running at full capacity.

The hotel does not have a cash machine, which is a major pain, and it also is not in a neighborhood where you could just walk outside and go for a stroll. It is only a block or so away from the Museo de Ciencias, Galeria de Arte Nacional, and the Museo de Bellas Artes and the metro.

I was pleasantly surprised by this restaurant which clearly cops off of ABSOLUT CITRON with its name and decor. Citron Cafe is on the top of the Centro Sambil mall, and if you sit outside on the porch, you get a great view of the city, the mountains that hedge in the valley, and every now and then you will see a helicopter landing at a nearby heliport. It's pleasant, and the noise of the city doesn't quite reach you. The menu offers a selection of various types of cuisines -- Italian, Asian, South American -- so it's a safe place with a group of people who may all be finicky eaters. I had a chicken dish, which was prepared in a delicious sauce and had wonderfully sauteed vegetables on the side. I did not have an appetizer, but still could not finish the plate, it was such an ample portion. My companion had pasta with seafood that he finished with gusto. Granted, it is odd to choose to have lunch in the mall, but as a sales person I frequently find myself in them to visit my retailing customers. This restaurant was much nicer than what I would have expected to find in a mall anywhere, and the urban interior design (steel and slate with low pools of water separating the bar from the restaurant and the porch from the restaurant) was a nice change from the bright lights and shiny marble of the mall's halls.

La Terraza is the buffet restaurant which is located off the pool of the Hilton Caracas hotel. The tables are spaced nicely apart, and have big comfortable chairs you can sink back into, which you will want to do after you made nine trips to the buffet! It's smorgasborg-style, with salads, cold dishes, hot dishes in chafing dishes and a carving station where the cook will broil for your fresh chorizo (blood sausages), chicken or a variety of fish. I ate a huge plate of salad greens and chorizo, which is salty and tasty. The dessert bar was equally impressive in scope but they were not a delicious as they looked. The servers were very kind and friendly, especially after I opted for their local beer POLAR over imported Budweiser or Heineken. Everything about dining here is fine; however, unless you are staying at the Hilton, there is no reason to eat here.

My customer Ernesto took me here, he is in his late twenties and said he eats here all the time. It made sense: the place had that clean, open modern feel to it that would be so appealing to young adults out with friends who wanted to see and be seen. You could eat either outside or inside, there were small aluminum tables and chairs everywhere, scattered between potted plants and columns paneled in light wood. On each table is an unopened bottle of wine that if you drink it you're charged but you can refuse it (suggested as supposedly it's not great wine). Inside there is a nice long bar. We drank icy Coronas with lime (called limon in South America). I had a delicious dish of pasta that absolutely filled me up. Again, my friend told me that all the pastas are homemade and quite good, so you cannot go wrong with anything you order. We sat there talking business for quite some time (at least two and a half hours) but the wait staff did not chase us away, and that was lovely. I highly suggest calling in advance to get the location of the restaurant as there are no formal street addresses in Caracas, they arrive at buildings by using landmarks, distances and intersections (like in Costa Rica).

Tecni-ciencia Libros is a chain of bookstores in Venezuela. In addition to the store in the Centro Sambil Mall, they have 6 or 7 others located throughout the country, but most of them are in Caracas (where most of the Venezuelan people are).

These bookstores are usually located in malls near the wealthier neighborhoods of the city. There is another branch at the Centro Comercial San Ignacio on Avenida Blandin in La Castellana, which is across the highway from the Centro Sambil (amazingly enough, both malls are flourishing). You can also find them on the internet, at www.tecniciencia.com, just in case you want to order books online when in Venezuela!

They carry a wide selection of books, from illustrated books to cookbooks, literature, childrens books, travel guides, and even textbooks. Some stores also have cyber cafes and small sections that sell video games and computer applications. The stores are well-lit, easy to navigate, and have a nice selection of books in English -- from the best sellers to the classics. Its appearance is like a mix between Waldenbooks and Barnes and Noble. The nicest thing about the stores is that they all have wide front windows, so you can see the rows and rows of books from outside. When you are inside, it is pleasant because they keep their doors closed, which creates a quiet relaxing place for booklovers to visit.

Books in English, because they are imported, will be more costly than if you bought them in the USA, the UK, Australia or New Zealand.

I was in Caracas for only 2 days for business, so I didn't have much of a chance to experience the cultural aspects of the city such as visit museums or take in a baseball game. However, I did get stuck in a rainfall of Biblical proportions, which brought the city to a screeching halt and left me with a unique impresion of Caracas. I was finishing up my appointment with my customer when we realized it was raining buckets (this was good news as they had been in a drought). We had no luck in calling a taxi, as they were all occupied and would need an hour to arrive to the store. The street outside was a literal river (of water) as well as metaphorical (the cars were so close together they seemed to flow into one another). After about half an hour, the rain petered out, so I decided to walk the three blocks to the metro. Well, I got there only to discover a "puddle" about 50 feet wide through which policemen were wading up to their thighs. The subway, it goes without saying, had pulled down its gates and shut down. I can only assume the "puddle" had flooded into the subway completely. I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was never getting to my next appointment, so I picked up on the vibe of the Venezuelans and went for a stroll. Many folks were milling about, enjoying the freshly-cooled and cleaned air in the valley, some heading off to get a POLAR. I walked back up towards the bookshop and found the leafy Plaza Francia in Altamira, most recognized by its obelisque (or OBELISCO as it's called here). Eventually I hailed a cab (which drove through puddles three feet deep to get me back to the hotel!), but in the meantime I simply enjoyed that post-rain relaxation that permeated the city. Going with the flow took on a literal meaning for me in Caracas that afternoon!