Big Walk Around Town

Our first complete day in Chile we walked around Santiago for about 6 hours under misty skies that burned off just after noon.

What we noticed: Chileans are pretty calm, and friendly in a sincere way when you need assistance.  There's not a lot of cafe culture, but there are of course restaurants and bars (just not acres of patio space).  Our guidebook tells us Chile is the most organized and least corrupt country in South America, which seems to be true.  And weirdly, Scotiabank seems to be one of the top 3 banks in the country.

It was a short walk to the Plaza de Armes, the main square in the old town where old dudes play chess in the   gazebo and well-dressed religious nuts proselytize at maximum volume.  Lots of calm national police (caribineros) presence doesn't interfere with daily life.  The main pedestrian shopping corridor runs past the Plaza.

One corner of the Plaza de Armes

A bit north on the pedestrian street one comes to the Mapocho river - not the most attractive aqueduct, but with a decent bit of green space (and highway) running beside it.  The tourist market is on the south side, and the more local-oriented Vega market is on the north side, with a decent selection of food, clothing and mini restaurants.

The Mapocho and Vega market, plus the beginning of a big river mural depicting environmental destruction...

...and the rest of the mural, that ends with grass and butterflies on the end

The forest park runs along the river

We headed to the Bella Vista neighbourhood, which is home to a couple of universities and a dense restaurant/bar scene, though nothing was open (before noon) when we arrived.  We decided to walk up Cerro San Cristobal - a prominent hill overlooking Bella Vista, with a Mary statue, cable car, parks, etc. on top.  And when I say decided, I mean that the funicular was closed for maintenance that day.

Purple poppies on the trail

A hazy/smoggy view part way up

Looking down from the Mary statue - theoretically the Andes are in the background somewhere

I get the feeling we're going to see a lot of statues like this in S. America

We walked past a little zoo on the way down, where Sarah wisely adopted the proper "play dead" position in the face of an escaping grizzly bear.

Then cheap empanadas for lunch, oh my!

The empanadas are not made of gold - $1000 is in Chilean pesos: a bit less than $2.50 CDN

Sarah loves her Italian-seasoned empanada

We walked further east, into the newer part of town with office towers and international hotel and restaurant chains, which felt a lot more generic.

This is at the "W" hotel; it's hard to see but the whole interior wall (several stories) is filled with wine

We took the cheap & efficient metro back to our hostel, and had a snack and a beer.  Then we went to a craft beer bar for dinner.  Yes, craft beer is popping up occasionally even in Chile!  We sampled all of their draught beers (mostly from one Santiago brewer - Rothhammer), and while I wasn't a big fan of most of them, their IPA was very nice.  (Even the very young barley wine was decent.)  A mug of IPA each and a huge thin crust pizza each made for a good night. [Sarah: My favourite parts were when the very friendly waiter 'warned' us that we had walked into a craft beer place, and when he called the IPA "eepa".  We weren't sure whether to correct him or not - maybe that is what it's called down here!]

[Sarah: These pizzas are not as big as they appear in this picture, I swear!  They were super tasty, and made a good dinner and lunch for the next day.]