First Full Day

It is amazing how different it feels after sleeping a full night on a real bed. We all slept in to around 9. In our family, this is a very remarkable occurrence, as Ryan pretty much always wakes up between 6-6:30. Our apart has a kitchen, and we'd picked up some basic groceries the previous night near Las Leones at the "Lider" grocery store. It was nice to be able to cook our own food, as we had yet to find any restaurants nearby that looked any good.

We're staying in the so-called "Bellas Artes" area, so named because it contains the fine arts museum. It's only about 2 blocks from our apart building. We wandered over there, passing on the way a little cafe that looked inviting. We easily found the fine arts museum and wandered in, finding that on Sundays entrance is free.

The museum featured an installation of a gigantic mountain of used clothes. There were also a number of statues from the 1800s and other exhibitions, such as a drop-in operatic duets from a local music school. It was interesting, kids got bored pretty quick.

After the museum we walked back to the cafe we'd noticed earlier. The Bellas Artes area is described in other places online as "Bohemian", or as feeling "European", with lots of cafes and shops and such. At this point, we were wondering where exactly it was that these descriptions applied to, because it sure wasn't the area we were in. It seemed more like the red light district! Anyhow, we'd noticed this one good looking cafe so we went back there for lunch, which was pretty good, decent sandwiches and some carrot cake (queque de zanahoria!). The kids got an interesting take on lemonade which was delicious, but not as sweet as they were expecting

After lunch we walked to the nearby Parque Forestal, where we made our way to a playground, dodging the chileans necking everywhere. In Chile, kids live with their parents until they are married. So apparently (lack of privacy at home?) it is very common to head to a park and lay in the grass making out (also, not very private? Don't worry, I missed that leap of logic also.)

The playground was nice, and was fun to watch chilean kids try and interact with Ryan. They took turns showing off their skills on the bars - Ryan able to climb higher, the locals able to do more pullups. They kept trying to talk to him, to which he responded "No hablo espanol", and they ran back to their parents shrugging their shoulders. I don't think english speaking kids are a very common sight here.

At 3pm we hooked up with the guys in "Where's Waldo" shirts for "Tours for Tips" - a free walking tour of the city. The tour was very interesting (for adults) covering many of the most important historic sights of the city. There were some amazing murals, 16th century churches next to glass highrises, and the location of the 1973 Pinochet coup. The tour lasted 3 hours, and the kids tolerated it very nicely.

After the tour we headed over to the Lastarria area, where the tourguide had told us there was an icecream shop which is rated in the top 20 worldwide. (who does these ratings?) We walked over there and instantly we knew that when people are describing Bellas Artes as bohemian or european, they're talking about Lastarria: it was a very charming area. We ended up eating an amazing dinner over there, with a very sympathetic waiter who helped us with our spanish. Did Stacy mention that the spanish here is challenging? Not only is it blazingly fast, but they also drop a lot of consonants and endings, and have a lot of local slang. I wonder how we'll feel about it at the end of the trip!