Today began with us unaware of what we were going to do. After having brekkie in the hotel we headed for the closest metro train station.
First noticeable thing about Santiago- amazing public transport system and indeed road network. Very clean, efficient and nice. The metro trains and stations are better than NY.
We headed into the town centro where we wandered the streets for a few hours. The streets are nice, lots of malls and trees. Kinda reminded me of a much nicer version of Parramatta.
We found our way to the Plaza de Armas, the central square, surrounded by churches and monumental civic buildings. Whilst it was nice, it didn't compare to Peruvian and Ecuadorian plazas in character.
We then wandered down to Mercedo Central, large fresh food and Fish market. Was an interesting area of the city, as it then linked up to the Belles Arts building, modern art museum.
We then wandered back through town and checked out a few more steers and buildings, one being the Basilica de La Merced. Again, it was not as interesting as Peruvian and Ecuadorian Churches.
We headed to Santa Lucia park. This was really cool. It's quite a large hill, 100m high or so, just off the town centre. It has an old castle at it's top and as you wander up the stone paths and steps of the hill, through a dense park, you pass many sculptures, bridges, fountains and murals. Was a really interesting place in the city. When you get to the top it affords pretty amazing views too.
When we got back down we strolled some more and stumbled into Lastaria street, a bohemian old world street with cool buildings and street markets. Finally, a part of the city with a bit of character. As we kept walking we hit the main road through Santiago, and along it was the new building, Centro Gabriela mistral. It's a large cultural centre, occupying a whole city block, with many spatial volumes wrapped in perforated weathering steel. Quite an impressive building I must say.
After that we wandered over to Bellavista barrio for some lunch, stopping at some craft markets near the uni along the way.
Lunch was a let down, terrible in fact. Note to self, don't order a hamburger in Santiago.
Gelato made up for a poor lunch and restored my faith.
We then wandered through the streets of bellavista, stumbling upon La Chascona, the house of poet Pavlo Neruda. There was many interesting houses in the area, much more character filled, set in the foothills of the mountains.
It was now late in the afternoon, so we headed back to the hotel for a siesta. It's very hot here, stuffy in our room too.
We settled in for the night, deciding to skip dinner as we weren't that hungry. Besides, there was some good shows on tele, Spanish game shows like deal or no deal. Hehe.
My initial opinions of Santiago are so so... It's a nice place but not amazing. The streets are nice, the buildings are ok, the river is poor and the city lacks a bit of character. One nice feature however is the parks. They are beautiful, full of cyclists, people, shade, fountains and trees. Quite a nice walk through along the river.
Hopefully tomorrow will enlighten us to the magnificence of Santiago which we expected.
- Blog from iMat
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