Day 16 (March 6) - Costanera Center

The La Vega market is not open as long on Sundays, so we decided to save that for tomorrow and instead started the day by walking east along the Parque Forestal toward the Costanera Center, which is one of the largest malls in Santiago.

We observed that every Sunday from 9 am - 2 pm, some streets are closed downtown so people can ride their bikes and exercise outside without having to worry about cars or traffic. It was quite a setup for it to be happening weekly, but it looked like many people were taking advantage of the opportunity.

Many bikes on the streets of Santiago on Sundays!

Downtown Santiago streets are closed from 9 am - 2 pm every Sunday.

We passed the Museo de Bellas Artes but didn't go inside.

Abraham Lincoln in the Parque Forestal... for some reason.

Obelisk in the Parque Forestal!

Sculpture in the Parque Forestal.

A lock-covered bridge crossing the Mapocho River.

A gift to Santiago from South Korea.

We continued walking eastward through some more parks, including a sculpture park and a local market with many fruit stands.

A sculpture park with the tallest building in South America (Gran Torre Santiago - "Grand Santiago Tower") in the background.

Part of the sculpture park on the way to the Costanera Center.

More of the sculpture park.

Gran Torre Santiago, which is 64 stories (984 feet) tall.

Starving, we eventually arrived at the mall at the base of the Gran Torre Santiago. The Costanera Center mall was incredibly large, about 7 stories wrapping around a central column of stores. The bottommost floor contained an entire grocery store, among many other stores, and the topmost floor had a movie theater!

Mall crepes for lunch (with chirimoya juice for me and mango juice for Sof).

We wandered around the mall for a couple hours, ate gelato, and watched the movie Deadpool since we hadn't seen it yet. After more wandering, we took the metro back to near Cerro Santa Lucía and looked for a restaurant for dinner. We ended up choosing Nolita, which was very good!

Sof's fancy salmon (I don't have a picture of my lasagna, but it just looked like lasagna).

Chocolate mousse dessert, small but rich and delicious!

When we got back, we decided tomorrow we'll wake up early and head to the cemetery and La Vega since we didn't get the chance to go today.

Days 14 and 15 (March 4 and 5) - Travels from Valparaíso to Santiago

We checked out of our Valparaíso Airbnb apartment at around 12:30 pm and got some breakfast at a healthy looking cafe on the way to the bus station. Sof and I both ordered an omelette pancake thing that had carrots and chard inside a flat egg pancake. We found that we like melon juice, so we got that along with it.

Carrots and chard wrapped in an egg pancake thing, which was delicious but filling!

After lunch, we took the 2 hour bus ride to Santiago's Alameda bus station. From there (apparently called the Estación Central in the metro part), we took our first Santiago metro from Line 1 to Line 5, which took us near our Santiago Airbnb apartment. The metro is more like a subway in that it's underground and has color-coded lines just like a typical subway system.

Map of Santiago's metro system. So far we've only ridden Lines 1 (red) and 5 (green).

Interestingly, there does not appear to be a Line 3 (just 1, 2, 4, 4a, and 5), but we passed a stop that looked like it would be part of a new Line 3. Exciting!

A painting Sof likes on a wall near the metro stop closest to our Airbnb apartment.

We dropped our belongings off at the apartment (which is the nicest we've stayed in so far, with a complete kitchen and our own washing machine) and went to dinner at Les Assassins. Apparently, it is a fairly well-known, well-ranked French restaurant that specializes in steak au poivre. It sounded like the owner lived in France for several years before coming back to Santiago to open his restaurant.

The front of the menu of Les Assassins.

The restaurant, with the owner walking by on the right.

Sof's favorite Pisco Sour so far.

I ordered the steak au poivre, which was very good!

Sof ordered a fillet which was also very good!

We were pretty tired after the filling dinner and pisco sours, so we turned in for the night after that. The next morning, we headed back toward the metro station and stopped by a cafe near the metro station for lunch.

I got chicken, and Sof got lasagna. We both drank strawberry juice!

We then took the Line 5 metro to the Quinta Normal, which is a large park that has fountains, trees, and a little lake where people could peddle small boats around. We went to the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights), which was dedicated to the victims of the Coup of September 11, 1973 when the Chilean military overthrew the government headed by President Salvador Allende.

The centralish part of Quinta Normal.

Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos.

After the museum, we walked around the park a bit and then started walking east back toward the apartment. We ate in a Chinese restaurant (just to see what the Chilean perception of Chinese food was like), but it wasn't particularly great, especially since it was a bit more expensive than most places around.

On the way back, we passed the previous Congreso building (before Congress was disbanded and then resumed in Valparaíso years later), the national mail building, and the Plaza de Armas, the main central plaza of Santiago.

The previous Congreso building.

Correo Central.

The central fountain of the Plaza de Armas.

The southeast corner of Plaza de Armas.

We got some gelato and went to the roof of our apartment, where we could see quite a bit of the city!

The Andes, although it's a bit hard to see with the haziness.

Cerro Santa Lucia (Saint Lucia Hill).

Cerro San Cristobal (San Cristóbal Hill), with a large white status of the Virgin Marry on top.

After all the wandering and excitement, we headed to bed with plans of seeing La Vega (the large, chaotic local market) tomorrow!

Day 13 (March 3) - Viña del Mar

We ran out of cheese, so we just ate bread and yogurt for breakfast. After that, we got bus tickets to Viña del Mar, which is only about 20 minutes away from Valparaíso. By around 1:15 pm, we had reached the first sight in Viña del Mar, which is a large flower clock.

Flower clock showing the time as 1:15 pm (bonus with the lady watering the clock!).

After the clock, we headed west towards the beaches, where we took some photos of the surf. The waves were quite large and crashed very close to shore... not a very safe place to swim.

The beach!

A southward view of the beach, showing Valparaíso in the distance.

Next, we headed east again toward the Quinta Vergara, a large park containing the Vergara Palace, amphitheater, and gardens. Unfortunately, it was closed until March 15, so we weren't able to go inside the gates.

We passed one of the metro stations, which apparently goes underground.

Cool wall painting at the entrance of the station.

Entrance to Quina Vergara, which we couldn't enter since it was closed.

We ate some lunch at a random small restaurant we passed and continued northward past some parks with statues. We arrived at the Museo Fonck and spent almost 2 hours reading about the history of the inhabitants of Chile, mammals/birds/fish/insects native to Chile, etc. It also included an interesting section on the moai (head statues) of Easter Island!

Statue of a guy in a park.

Outside the Museo Fonck, with a real moai that was given to mainland Chile as a gift from the inhabitants of Easter Island.

We then continued northward until we reached the malls, which were quite touristy. After a bit of wandering, we got some delicious (and very cheap!) shrimp yakisoba from a nearby restaurant. We grabbed some dessert at the Bravissimo down the road, which we heard was the best ice cream in Valparaíso (although we were technically in Viña del Mar, we agreed it was very good ice cream!).

Mall Marina Arauco, which was four stories tall (the fourth had a theater and gym, not shown in this photo).

Garotta, which was the name of this sundae with chocolate shell on top of chocolate ice cream, above vanilla ice cream which was on top of a brownie over whipped cream with chocolate syrup at the bottom.

We then headed back toward the bus route, passing the Viña del Mar Casino and a McDonalds which looked like some kind of castle.

McDonalds, lit up red.

The casino of Viña del Mar.

We caught a bus back to Valparaíso for only $500 CLP = $0.73 total for the both of us. By the time we got back to the apartment, it was already about 10 pm. Tomorrow morning, we'll be packing up and heading back to Santiago. It was nice getting to spend some time in both Valparaíso and Viña del Mar!

Day 12 (March 2) - Day Off

Sof's feet had pretty rough looking blisters from all the walking so far on the trip, so we decided to take an easy day and not walk around too much. We did check out the roof of our building though, which had a nice 360 degree view of the city. We could even see the Congreso (Congress) building, where the Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados) and Senate (Senado) meet. They used to meet in Santiago, but on March 11, 1990 (after Pinochet's reign had ended) they were relocated to Valparaíso to decentralize the government.

The roof of our building.

Roof view looking westward.

Roof view looking northward (toward the sea).

Congreso Nacional de Chile!

We then ate some lunch at a nearby Peruvian restaurant, which was amazingly good and very cheap (about $6.000 CLP = $8.74 per person, tax always included in the price).

Sazón Nazca, a really good Peruvian restaurant near where we are staying.

My traditional Peruvian shrimp dish (forgot the name).

Sof's traditional Peruvian beef dish (forgot the name).

Next we got dessert at Emporio La Rosa again (the #18 ice cream parlor in the world), where I accidentally ate a half liter of dulce de leche and cookies and cream ice cream, and Sof just ordered one scoop of dulce de leche.

My half liter of ice cream, which is apparently larger than a pint, but just as delicious. Notice that it was sealed as if I were going to take it home with me instead of eat it on the patio  ;)

After returning to the apartment for a bit, we got some dinner from a nearby bar (Chilean pizza!) and returned home, exhausted. We went to sleep, but not before I was able to finally get caught up with the blog!! (Hooray finally having stable internet!).