First Impressions and Lots of Nasty Bathrooms

I feel like the taxi ride away from every airport in developing countries includes heap after heap of trash and clusters of dilapidated shanties. Santiago is no exception. Though, it was only about 10 minutes before we got more into the city proper. It's obvious that the city is HUGE with a smattering of green spaces and parks. Traffic seems to move much more orderly than we have seen in central american countries, and it's lacking the constant cacophony of horns and yelling.

After a lot of research we decided to spend our first few nights in Bellas Artes, I don't think we will stay here much longer, but we will see. When booking the hotel I was confused by the fact that I saw multiple hotels with same address. Now I realize it's a large set of apartment buildings where different companies rent out sets of units (called aparts). There are lots of sex shops and gentleman's clubs near us.

When we first arrived we had 4 hours to kill while waiting for our apart. Ella was feeling really crummy, and public toilets are hard to come by. We had a not so great lunch where Ella went to the bathroom 4 times. The walls were literally wallpapered in porn?? That was awkward, luckily she was more fixated on the filthy floor that she kept sitting on.

We were looking for a grassy area in the shade to just chill and wait when we luckily stumbled into Cerro Santa Lucia. It's a really cool park right near our hotel. It has lots of areas to sit and run, lots of statues and fountains, and a castle with many steps to climb.

Since we were all nearly comatose it was exactly the right speed! Chile has LOTS of stray dogs, which they call qildros. We met a very cute one right away, which helped to take Ella's mind off of her yucky tummy for a bit. The kids had a blast running a run and playing fetch with their new pal that they named Perro.

The qildros are very well fed, most of the shops have food and water out for them. Supposedly they will even turn down bread scraps because they get so much better stuff. The parks throughout the city have small dog houses for them and they are vaccinated by the city. In looking up how to spell qildros, I did just find a news story about how President, Michelle Bachelet included plans to sterilize strays in her recent campaign.

Anyways, Cerro San Lucia was a perfect activity for our first day. After checking in to our hotel we chilled for a bit. It's mediocre, a little dirty, but it's 2 bedrooms plus a bed in the living room which makes for ideal sleeping conditions.  Since Ella was feeling a bit better we decided to try out the metro.  The ride there was uneventful. We wanted to check out Providencia, but apparently we didn't go far enough. We walked around the Las Leones metro stop and most things seemed to be closed. We had dinner at an ok Italian restaurant, La Piccola Italia. Nothing special, but we were happy because Ella ate some plain noodles, after we woke her up...

                 
                  Ryan's Parkour teacher asked him to practice and take                           pictures throughout the city. This is homework that he is                       taking seriously!





The metro ride home was a huge reminder that we REALLY need to work on our spanish. It felt different when we walked in, larger crowds, more police and military...but we didn't have much to compare it to. Our departing train took a few extra minutes and passengers seemed annoyed. After a couple of stops they made some Chilean Speed Announcements. All I could catch was that they were evacuating the metro and everyone needed to get off. On the platform there were big red lights flashing Emergencia. Folks didn't seem to be rushing or scared- just annoyed/angry.  It was about 9:30 at night and there were thousands of people on the streets. All of the passing busses were packed to the max. We ended up carrying our groceries quite a ways. The next morning we were able to look it up in English, http://santiagotimes.cl/santiago-grinds-to-a-halt-after-metro-meltdown/.