This Knot is Tied!

Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you the new Mr and Mrs. Pomerantz!

We are safely back in Los Angeles after a spectacular wedding and a fantastic trip to Colombia. We ended up celebrating our vows in fine style with 100 of our closest friends (~40 of whom flew in from the USA).

As our guests discovered, Colombians really know how to throw a party! The two day extravangza featured carnival performers, an impromptu paso fino horse demonstration, an impromptu breakdancing demonstration, a salsa band that played about 3 hours beyond what they were paid to, an awesome Jennifer Lopez hand puppet, some great and hilarious toasts (with real time translation), a menagerie of exotic fruits, a rocket-themed cake ornament, a midnight mariachi serenade of the bride to be, and much more...

We're still waiting on the photos from our official photographer, but Will's dad has already uploaded some great ones from his camera (and there are many more to be found on Facebook). Click the photo below to find that album:



We can't say thank you enough to all of you for attending and/or sending your warm wishes and congratulations. Our hearts are bursting with all of the affection you've sent our way. But we've also got to spend extra special thanks to our parents (Eduardo, Jim, Patricia, and Sandra), our siblings (Drew, Lucho, Pipe, and Shäiel), Diana's bridesmaids (the two Andreas, Brooke, Leela, Lori, and Tiffany) Will's groomsmen (Carlos Augusto, Paul, Steven, and the aforementioned brothers), our flower girl (Maria Camila), our rosary bearer (Shäiel), our arras bearer (Nico), our translator (Cristian), and our wonderful family-friend-turned-wedding-planner-extraordinaire (Linda). None of this would have happened without you. THANK YOU!

More Wedding Info

Much to our amazement, our wedding is now less than three weeks away. Less than three weeks! How does that happen?

We've got some more key pieces of information for you.

Arrival Form
While you are on the airplane to Colombia, you should receive a short form that will be used as you go through customs. It will ask some standard questions--your passport number, if you are carrying very large sums of cash, et cetera. It will also ask you for a local address and phone number. Assuming you are staying with us at the Dann Carlton Hotel, please enter:
      Carrera 2 No 1-60
      Barrio El Peñón
      Cali, Colombia
      Phone: (57) (2) 8933000


Dress Code
We already touched on this a little bit, but for those of you curious for more information, here are our recommendations.

      Welcoming Ceremony (December 28th): please wear summer colors with comfortable shoes. Note that you will likely be walking outside on grass.

      Wedding and Reception (December 29th): Men should wear a suit, with tie recommended. Women should wear a cocktail dress or similar.

Upon Your Arrival
For many of you, we'll be arranging transportation from the airport to the hotel. We will send you each an email confirming that we have arranged a shuttle for you and, hopefully, sending you a photograph of the place where we'll meet you (we head to Colombia on Dec 18th, so look for photos on the 19th or 20th.

For those of you that are arriving at unusual times or that are not going to the Dann Carlton, you should be able to find a ready supply of taxis at the airport.

Money Exchange
Although there will be places to exchange money in Colombia, we recommend that you change money in the US if you have the opportunity. You can look up an approximate exchange rate here; as of December 9, one US dollar is worth about 2000 Colombian pesos.

Also note that the Colombians use the same symbol ($) for Colombian pesos as Americans use for US Dollars. So if you see prices that seem about two thousand times too high, don't panic!

Budgeting Example: Food prices
Just as an example to help you budget for any side expenses:

      Dinner for one in a very fancy restaurant, e.g. where local celebrities would dine: 62,000 pesos (~$30 US)
      Dinner for one in a good restaurant: 30,000 pesos (~$15 US)
      Dinner for one in a fast food restaurant: 15,000 pesos (~$7.50 US)

If you are coming to Colombia for ~four days, you might want to bring something on the order of $150 US (300,000 pesos) -- more if you plan to spend a lot on souvenirs.





More info coming as we have it!

Information FROM our Guests

Hello friends!

By now, wedding invitations should have arrived, at least to all of our guests in the US. Given the location, we weren't able to invite everyone we would have liked to--and we also know that traveling to attend our wedding will be a bit demanding. Still, we're hopeful that many of you will be able to join us in Colombia this December, and we are very grateful to those of you who have already completed and returned your RSVP cards.

For those of you who will be joining us, we ask you to please fill out the brief survey we've created to solicit information from our guests. This shouldn't take long (it's only 10 questions), but it will provide us with critical information that lets us help you book a hotel room, arrange for transportation to and from the airport, et cetera.

We've also made some minor updates to the Wedding FAQ we posted a few months ago.

If you have any questions about the survey, or any difficulty with the forms, please feel free to email us!

Purchasing Airfare to Colombia

As promised, we've been checking into the possibility of getting some kind of group discount for airfares for guests who will join us in Colombia this December. After some searching, it turns out good group rates only kick in if we get at least 16 people on the same flight--and even then, the discounts aren't that large.

However, we've also been monitoring flights online, and prices are indeed starting to climb. We recommend that you seriously consider purchasing your tickets now. As mentioned previously, you should probably consider flying through Miami--that's the only city in the US that has direct flights to Cali, Colombia. Other flight options may work better for you in terms of schedule or price, but would require you to connect through another city in Colombia or Panama.

Specifically, we'd recommend the following flights:

• Avianca Airlines, Flight number 39, leaving Miami (MIA) at 4:30pm on Sunday, December 27th. Returning on Flight number 38, leaving Cali, Colombia (CLO) at 10:15am on Wednesday, December 30th.

This round trip ticket is currently available for $464 through a variety of websites (Orbitz, Cheaptickets, Priceline, Vayama, Expedia, and Avianca itself all have the same price, plus or minus $10). The same set of flights on the surrounding days have quite similar prices, until you get to returns on or after January 1, when the prices go up.

Again, we recommend that you consider purchasing your tickets right away--the prices are much more likely to go up in the future than they are to go down or stay the same.

Note: We also updated our Wedding FAQ with this information, as well as a few new answers about currency, attire, and transportation to and from the airport.

Lonely Planet Colombia

Thanks to my dad, we learned that just this past week, Lonely Planet released a new and updated edition of their Colombia guidebook. Actually, Dad din't just tell us about the book--he shipped us a copy. It arrived at the end of last week, much to our surprise.

We haven't had too much a chance to flip through it yet, but hope to do so soon. We'll pass on any thoughts and reviews we've got. In the meantime, any of you thinking about planning some vacation time in Colombia and interested in picking up a guidebook would be well served to consider this one: we can't yet say whether or not it's the best, but we can certainly say it's the freshest.

Here's an uncensored reproduction of the introductory section about Cali, the city where we're getting married (and Diana's hometown):

Population: 3.5 million
Elevation: 969m

Cali is not an immediately likable city. For one thing, it is muggy and hot. For another, it's an industrial and transportation hub whose business is business, not tourism. Caleños shrug off criticism about their city with the saying "Cali es cali, y lo demás es loma, ¿oís?" (Cali is Cali, and the rest [of Colombia] is just mountain, ya hear?).

Those who dig deeper and spend some time here will find a welcoming, friendly city with great nightlife, good restaurants, and plenty to do, especially in the evening, when a cool mountain breeze dissipates the heat of the day.

Go to San Antonio, the old Colonial Center, and linger over a beer or ice cream in the park, or better still, a champú or
lulada both fruit drinks made with lulo, a unique Colombian fruit typical of the Valle de Cauca, of which Cali is the capital. Wander through Barrio Granada's many upscale restaurants and boutiques, or hang out at Chipichape shopping mall and marvel at the local plastic surgeons' prowess.

Nowhere are Colombia's racial diversity and harmony, and the incredible beauty of the Colombian women, more apparent than here. Cali women are nationally renowned for their sense of style and beauty, and the way they carry themselves.

HISTORY
After helping Francisco Pizarro conquer the Incas, Sebastián de Belacázar (also known in Latin America as Benalcázar) quarreled with his former boss and moved north to strike out on his own. After founding Quito and Popayán, he arrived in the Valle de Cauca in 1536, where he dubbed his new settlement Santiago de Cali.

Over the centuries Spaniards shipped in thousands of African slaves to work the valley's sugarcane and cotton plantations. The Valle remains a major agricultural producer, and in higher regions also produces grapes and coffee.

Cali was a small town in orbit to departmental capital Popayáan well into the 20th century, when railroads, and later highways, overtook the rivers as the dominant form of transport. To this day more than half of Colombia's exports pass through Cali on their way to Buenaventura.

ORIENTATION
Cali is built along the western edge of the wide Valle de Cauca. The city center is laid out in a grid plan around the Plaza de Caycedo. This is where you'll find most of the historic churches and museums.

Southwest of the center lies San Antonio, the colonial heart of Cali. North lies the bustling, upscale Av Sexta, and nearby Av 9, where you'll find Granada, the city's dining district. Further north along Sexta is Chipichape, one of the largest shopping malls in Colombia

More on Colombian Food

Building on the theme of my Easter post about Colombian food...

Many of you are already familiar with chef, author, and travel show host Anthony Bourdain. I enjoyed a few of his books, and we've are at the now-closed DC location of his Les Halles restaurant a few times. While we don't watch his TV show No Reservations regularly, I do enjoy it whenever I happen to catch an episode.

Anyway, Tony recently went to Colombia to sample the food. Although he didn't go to Cali specifically, the foods he ate are by in large similar to what the Caleños eat. So, check it out below. It's divided into five parts:

Part 1

Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

Easter Lunch

Diana and I went out for a lovely Easter lunch yesterday--Colombian style. In addition to being delicious, the meal doubled as research for this here blog. What better way to get you all excited about going to Colombia that to post more photos like this one:


(By the way, that photo was taken from the camera on my new cell phone.)

Diana had a very nice soup called Sancocho de Gallina--a tasty broth filled with chicken, corn, potato, and yuca. It's simple and delicious, and a very typical Caleño (from Cali, Colombia) meal.

In honor of the holiday, I had the dish listed on the menu as "Ave Maria Pues." It was delicious and enormous. As you can see, it included: carne asada (steak), plantanos maduros (plantains), arroz (rice), chorizo (sausage), frijoles (beans), arepa (similar to a biscuit), and chicharones
(Similar to pork rinds), and a whole lot of awesome.

A Little Bit about Cali

Since most of you have never been to Colombia before, you're probably quite curious about what it will be like. If you're like me, it can be a bit difficult to picture life in Cali.

We found a video online that I think will help. It's produced by a local hotel--one of the ones we were considering, but ultimately didn't choose--so it's definitely designed to give a favorable impression. But it also shows the Cali I saw on my visit there last fall.

Check it out by clicking here. You'll probably want to watch both the main "Concierge Video Tour" and "Discover" at least.

And of course, to learn more, you can always turn to Wikipedia.