Toursim in Santiago

We basically did a one-day massive tour of Santiago's main monuments and attractions. 

Bella Vista Neighborhood

This is where the hostel we stayed in was located.  It was a really nice area, with lots of pubs/bars and right at the bottom of Cerro San Cristobal. The first night, we went to a bar with live jazz.  The last night there, we went to this restaurant called Como Agua Para Chocolate, the place definitely takes aspects of the movie and puts them in the setup and menu of the restaurant, plus the food was good (and the menu was really creative).

Pablo Neruda's House

We took a tour of Pablo Neruda's house, La Chascona... normally you're not supposed to take pictures, but we cheated.  

In front of the house, there are 6 pillars with his poems written on them:

The really cool thing about his house is that it had many sailor elements: Neruda was fascinated with sailors and sailing, but afraid of the sea and drowning, so he wanted to be a "land sailor" and brought random items from all over the world to decorate it.  The dinning room is long, narrow and has a low ceiling because it was meant to replicate a ships hull.  The colored glasses he brought from Portugal, he preferred them because he said that water tasted better when drunk from colored glass. Finally, the house is named La Chascona because of Matilde's messy hair.

Cerro San Cristobal

We took a funicular to the top of the hill, and from there there was an amazing view of the city.  Also, we tried mote, a drink made of iced tea and wheat, with dried peaches.  It was quite the eccentric mix, to say the least.

Plaza de Armas

We walked from the hill to Plaza de Armas and the surrounding streets, which had many museums and monuments.  It was a really nice plaza, with an antique/book fair, old men playing chess, fountains and statues, and lots of trees. However, there was also some Christian gathering/march made up of tons and tons of ppl… so that took up a lot of space, and we heard lots of religious singing while we were there. Around that area, we saw some churches, the ex-National Congress (quite controversially, it had been moved to Valparaiso), the judicial building, some pretty facades, the Museo de Santiago (we didn't go in) Paseo Ahumada (a pedestrian street) and then we went to the Museum of Precolombian art.