Exploring Santiago: Week 12 / Day 81 / April 1
Santiago, Chile: We left our hotel this morning to do a bit of preliminary exploration of Santiago. Across from our hotel was a thin park that runs for a bit over a mile – Parque Forestal. The first thing we saw in the park was a fountain built by the local German immigrant community.
From here, we began to move through the park heading towards the Mercado Central.
One of the things I have noticed already about Santiago is that there is a lot of graffiti. As you can see in the picture, they even manage to put graffiti on the trees. Also, a lot of it is not terribly good graffiti. Rather than being stylistic street art, it is a lot of simplistic scrawls or names.
Moving through the park, we came to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Arts (Museum of Fine Arts for those of you playing along at home).
This museum, like many others in Santiago, is free to the public. If we have time, we hope to come back here later.
We continued walking through the park heading towards the Mercado Central.
Arriving at the Central Market, I will have to confess that I was a little disappointed. This market is listed as one of the top five in the world by National Geographic. However, while the market building itself is pretty, there is actually very little market inside. Instead, it is mostly restaurants with a smattering of fish or meat vendors on the perimeter. Perhaps I have become a bit too much of a market snob during this trip.
Moving from the Mercado Central, we walked over to the Plaza de Armas. This central square is from the original plan for the city laid out in 1541. The remainder of the streets in Santiago are on a grid based upon this square.
Located on one side of this square is the Metropolitan Cathedral of Santiago. Construction of this church began in 1748 and it was completed in 1800. Today, it is the seat of the Archbishop of Santiago.
The church has a rather plain looking exterior, but the interior chapels, stained glass, and statues, are all quite striking.
There was an active service taking place while we were there (a bit surprising to me for a Monday at 11:30 AM, but I am not a Catholic, so, what do I know), so we were unable to get close to the main altar.
Leaving the church, we walked through a few pedestrian mall areas which were quite pleasant. The ability to walk for several blocks unconcerned by traffic is a definite plus. After walking for a while we stopped at a street-side cafe for lunch. They are really into hot dogs here, but we opted instead for some other sandwiches (yes, I just implied that a hot dog is a sandwich, what of it?). After lunch, we headed over to the hotel to collect our bags and check into our Airbnb.
On the walk to the hotel we passed by a small park that is built upon a large knoll in central Santiago.
The geography of the area has a large, flat plain, with a number of hills rising abruptly up out of the ground. Many of these hills appear to have been turned into parks.
After getting settled in at our new accommodations and resting for a bit, we headed out for the evening. Our mission was to go to a store in a mall about a mile and a half away that sells tickets for soccer matches. The mall is located in the tallest building in South America – the Costanera Center. The selling of soccer tickets is a bit odd here, as they are only available at a few retail outlets or at the stadium itself.
We took the metro up to the mall and found out that we had been mislead. The store that was supposed to sell tickets, did not, in fact, sell tickets. We were given instructions on the store to go to at Plaza de Armas, which we will do tomorrow. On the plus side, we now had a nice walk back to the apartment through the streets of downtown Santiago.
Taking a slight detour on our way back, we crossed over the central river that divides Santiago, the Mapocho River. On the other side of the river is the Bellavista district which is home to a lot of restaurants and bars.
We walked through this area for a bit (getting some ice cream along the way), before going back to the apartment for the night.
