Santiago round two

As I mentioned in my last post, a few girls and I had plans to go to Santiago for the weekend. I am very glad that I chose to do this because my view of the city is much brighter. We ate some good food and walked (what we calculated later) about 10 miles in one weekend! Santiago has a great metro system, but it is very pedestrian friendly and we got to see a lot of the city on foot!

Friday

We arrived in the afternoon, got situated in our hostel (Hostel Aji, I recommend it!) and then headed out to explore a bit.

These photos are from Cerro San Cristobal- in the barrio Bellavista in Santiago. We paid to take a ridiculously-tall funicular elevator up to the top and enjoyed the view from up there. I never realized how massive the city is! Because Santiago is nestled between the Andes and foothills of the Andes, smog and pollution has become a problem. But the view is still pretty incredible!

Us girls at the top!

That evening, we ate at a restaurant in Bellavista and then met up with a Chilean friend of Beth's, named Daniella. Daniella is 21 so it was fun to talk to a Chilena of our age. She took us to the Mexican restaurant where her boyfriend works and we had some appetizers and what not. She speaks some English, but we spoke mostly in Spanish, which was kind of fun! This was one of the first times I had spoken Spanish (for a long period of time) with my friends from the US, because we normally speak in English around each other. After our long day, we headed back to the hostel.

Saturday

Saturday was our big walking day! We started around noon and just walked and walked! We made it to the central area of town, where La Moneda and all of that is, and decided to check out el Mercado Central [Central Market]. We saw an array of fresh seafood and meat and it was a pretty cool place actually. It's in a pretty, old building with lots of noise and excitement. We decided to eat in the market as well, as there are some casual restaurants in it. 4 of us opted for the 'house special', which was a bowl of mariscos (shellfish) and a side of salad. The array (pictured below) was colorful and interesting. I normally like shellfish but I'm not sure I would order something like this again, because a lot of the textures were inedible to me and tasted like goo or tongues or silly putty. However it was an adventure and you only live once, right?

Then we walked off our meal and ended up at this huge park in the Yungay barrio. The park is beautiful and has a large museum in it as well. We found some much-needed shade and enjoyed a popsicle. While doing this we saw the cutest puppies ever! The stray dogs here are called perros vagos. These puppies were strays, so it was sad to know the tough lives they will lead. I wanted to bring one home as a souvenir, but somehow I don't think a dog would get through customs very well. After our puppy encounter, we checked out the museum. It was pretty cool, but the highlight of the park were the little puppies! By this time it was the late afternoon and we took the metro back home, because we were sick of walking!

Upon our return to the hostel, we ran into a girl named Adrian who was staying in my room. She is from Denver (went to Cherry Creek HS) and had just arrived the night before on a year-long backpacking trip, solo! We wanted a little pick-me-up and invited her to go to a cafe with us. We found a cute little place and began to tell her all the things she needs to know for living in Chile! We taught her about food, chilenismos and other little things. After coffee, we all came back to the hostel to wash up and relax for a bit. Then, Adrian and my group went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant. I had black beans and green chile and it was AMAZING! We talked more about Chile and what-not and by the time the meal was over, it was past midnight! Our original plan was to go dancing, but we decided to go back to the hostel instead.

This is a fountain near our hostel. We saw two separate bride and groom couples having their photo taken here!

Sunday

We woke up relatively early, because Angela, one of the girls in our group's family flew in that morning to visit her in Chile! She went to pick them up at the airport in Santiago and the rest of us went to find a Starbucks. We enjoyed the b-e-a-utiful morning and later we met Angela and her travel-weary family at the bus station to go back to Vina.

That evening, a few of us decided to go watch the sunset in Vina. These are some of the photos, with the sun setting over Valparaiso.