Goodbye Valparaiso, Hello Santiago!

Hola from Santiago!

Wow, Friday was a big day. I had my goodbyes in Valparaiso, traveling and settling in to Santiago, and going to the Avril Lavigne concert all in one day…no wonder that I slept until 11:30 today, haha! (That could also have something to do with the fact that I have my own room with an incredibly comfortable bed here…not really missing the YMCA at all!).

You know how I said that my goodbye in Valparaiso wasn´t really hitting home in my last post? Well wow, yesterday it definitely did. I went to go serve for my last day at the soup kitchen, and we had brought gifts for our friends there. Giving the gifts and being able to thank them was really great, but then they opened the doors to the dining room and all the people were there with a little snack buffet set out to thank us. I was SO surprised, let the waterworks begin. Especially when Mauricio gave this speech about our time and work here that was one of the kindest things I´ve ever heard. It was the perfect send-off, even though it was definitely hard to have the fact set in that I may never see these people again…or at least not for awhile…and that I was leaving my beautiful Valparaiso! 🙁

But…luckily Santiago has been pretty awesome!!! We are staying for free in the apartment of a family friend of Levi, and she is so nice and has a BEAUTIFUL apartment, it has it’s own personal elevator that goes up to her door, how cool is that?!?! Here’s the highlights of my time in Santiago:

TOP 5 SITES:

1. Cerro Santa Lucia y San Cristobal

Sorry Valparaiso, but hands down the coolest acensor (elevator) I´ve experienced was on Cerro SanCristobal, it was HUGE, like an amusement park ride and the views from the top were incredible. Both hills are filled with nature trails, tourist and craft shops, cafes, cool old buildings and castles, and San Cristobal has a GIANT statue of the Virgin Mary you can hike up to, it was awesome.

2. La Moneda and surrounding area

Government buildings…I´m a nerd 🙂 But it´s really pretty and La Moneda is the presidential palace which was bombed during the 1973 military coup, Salvador Allende, the president, died inside. After studying it for so long, it was quite the experience to actually see. All the museums were free on Sunday, so I went to the history museum which had his broken glasses that were taken from La Moneda after the bombing…chilling

3. Parque de la Paz (Park for Peace)

This park sits on the old site of Villa Grimaldi, the main torture and detention center used during the Pinochet dictatorship. It was destroyed in the last year of the dictatorship to conceal evidence, but since it has been turned into a national monument, and it was an incredible and emotional experience to visit. I´ve studied Chile during the Cold War quite a bit, and my human rights class in Spanish had a whole unit on Villa Grimaldi. The park is a mix of sculptures, memory walls with names and pictures, and reconstructions of building based on survivors accounts. The descriptions of the atrocities that happened there, mixed with actually seeing what the cells were like, and then walking through the rose garden with the names and faces of the tortured and killed, makes this an emotional experience, but I´m so glad I went, it was an important thing for me to do, and I think an important thing for Chile that this park is here now.

4. Mercado Central

Huge fish market that´s also filled with seafood restaurants….I saw octopus! And countless other really weird sea creatures! And ate delicious fresh fish! It´s a cool experience 🙂

5. Patio Bellavista

Bellavista is party central in Santiago, and Patio Bellavista was my favorite spot. It´s filled with tons of beautiful craft stalls and tourist shops on the outside, all the walls and floors are mosaics, and the whole plaza is filled with bars and restaurants…and lots of happy hour promotions 🙂 Live music and performances go on every night, and discotecas are on all the surrounding streets, you can´t be bored spending a night there.

TOP 5 MOMENTS

1. Luke eating sea urchin

Hands down, funniest/most terrorizing thing I´ve seen in awhile. Luke really has wanted to try octopus, but for some reason the markets just sell it and restaurants weren´t making it. SO, he went for sea urchin. Which ended up coming in a ice-cold soup. Being the brave man he is, he still tried it, only to find that it was also completely raw and DIGUSTING! I thought he was going to puke. And the waiter kept trying to get him to eat more…..jajajajajaja, so awful…but my fish was good! ;D

2. Avril Lavigne concert!!!

Haha, this was so much fun. We heard about the concert in Valpo, it was on our last day of work, and tickets were only $40…so we decided it would be a fun way to celebrate being done…I mean, how random is it to say you saw Avril Lavigne perform in Santiago?! And she sang Complicated and Sk8ter Boi….and all the Chileans knew every word….my life is complete 😉

3. Cooking in a nice kitchen!

We decided to cook dinner for the woman whose apartment we are staying in last night, and it was a surprise to me how nice it felt to cook! The kitchen at the Y sucked, to be blunt, so I rarely made anything, and the process was never fun. But whipping up pasta and chicken in a gorgeous, clean kitchen and having a long Chilean dinner at good old 9pm was pretty great 🙂

4. Splurging on typical Chilean food for dinner.

I tried Pastel de Choclo for the first time (corn cake). It comes in a black stone bowl and I got it vegetarian, so it´s this yummy cooked sweet corn, that´s crusty on top, soupy in the middle and filled with veggies….SO YUMMY! That plus wine, pisco sour and arroz con leche was heaven 🙂

5. WORST MOMENT = OUR BUS TO ARGENTINA WAS CANCELED DUE TO SNOW IN THE MOUNTAINS!!! 🙁  We got a full refund for tomorrow morning, so cross your fingers that we can leave tomorrow! On the bright side, I would have never seen Cerro San Cristobal or Parque de la Paz if I wasn´t stuck here today, and those were two of my favorite spots…so we´ll focus on the silver lining 🙂 Hopefully, the next time I write will be from Buenos Aires, chao!