La Candelaria Hostel Bogota — Hotel in Bogota, Capital District

We enjoyed our four days in Bogota and the La Candelaria Hostel was the perfect base for our exploration of the Candelaria area and beyond.

For starters they offer an airport pickup for a small fee who will drop you steps from the door. The rooms were cozy and clean, the cleaning staff does a great job every day.

It's located on a quiet street and easy walking distance to all the main attractions, great location! Less than two minutes to Parque Periodista and the visitors center in the base of the Bolivar statue. On Sunday it turned into a big flea market. It's a 15 minute walk (uphill and a little strenuous but we are over 40 and 50 and managed it fine in 15 minutes) to the Telerferique at Mounserrate. 5-10 minute walk to both the Botero and Gold Museums, about 20 minutes to Plaza Bolivar. Also nearby: two small grocery stores and several restaurants and bars. Five minute walk to two bus stops. Also located in the middle of a cute neighborhood with a lot of great grafifiti art on the walls if you just explore the streets around you. The street the hostel is on is also a great photo spot.

Breakfast is included of coffee, cocoa or tea with corn flakes, bread rolls, cut fruit and a banana. Simple but worked for us. Due to covid, you cannot use the kitchen but a refrigerator and microwave are available and you are free to eat or hang out in the small courtyard. nnWalls are a little thin if your neighbors are loud but people were generally quiet and respectful. You get a small desk, wardrobe and tv in the room. The shower was great. Wait one minute and you have really hot water and great water pressure.

The best part is the extremely helpful staff. Everyone is great but Adriana really went above and beyond for us. We don't speak much Spanish but she was able to give us simple, clear and concise information in English on how to navigate public busses to the Salt Church at Zipaquira. Most helpful of all, she arranged for a nurse to come right to our room and administer the covid tests that we needed to fly on to our next destination. We were really stressed about this process and she really held our hand to make it happen. We even contacted her at home and she worked with the staff on duty to contact the doctor who assured them we would get the results in time. We got the test results in about 34 hours and were able to sleep our last night peacefully.

They even have a hostel dog during on most day shifts, Anni who will loudly greet each new visitor as the arrive for the first time. A nice touch since we miss our own dog at home. Lastly we again took the same shuttle back to the airport which was really very reasonable.

A couple of tourist mistakes we made that I will share and neither involved the Hostel. First we booked a walking tour for Friday morning which was cancelled due to protests which I was told are more likely to happen on Fridays. Secondly, Sunday is the best day as Colombians come out in droves for Ciclovia when many streets are shut down for biking and walking. Lots of street vendors and buskers. Our mistake was not booking bike rentals before Sunday because we could not find any to rent and it sure looked like fun. We walked around and enjoyed the whole atmosphere. Best walking streets we found were Carrera 7 and Calle 10 which were both car free walks. They intersect at...

What a nice BnB to stay at. The staff really goes out of their way to make you feel at home. The description they post on their website doesn't do the place justice. The building is divided up into units which in North American standards are townhouses. I have a single room on the 2nd floor and the people across the hall have a double. Downstairs is a small livingroom, half kitchen and bathroom. I see the people across the hall about 2 times a day. Yesterday I asked what to do, the receptionist wrote out a step by step page of instructions to go to a small town north of here to see the salt mine cathedral (a must do). I showed the paper to everyone along the way and they were more than happy to point me in the right direction. What excellent service!!! Only Orlando speaks English, but when I we really can't understand each other we sit down on Google Translate and it works it way out.

NOTE: The street names changed in Bogota so the New Address...

The room and in the inside are nicely decorated and VERY CLEAN. And you feel safe, knowing you are surrounded by a pretty bad neighborhood||It does not have the trashy backpacker style of some places... It is more business like||The bedding is a little bit cheap...but ok||Some doors showed they were forced the entry and one of the windows did not lock (but the bars prevented any entries)||The employees were nice but not ready to do the extra mile when the internet went down.||The neighborhood is very exotic, but dangerous at night.. better take a taxi to go from one block to the other...It is ok during the daytime and you are close to downtown Bogota... The area has a lot of homeless, i have never seen as many homeless in my whole life of traveler (40 countries)... even guatemala city (where i had been) had less poor people.||The price was...