Santiago

What a town!  Small enough to walk around and big enough that it's got some life to it once the sun goes down.  Although that doesn't happen very early as it's actually in the same time zone as Argentina so the sun doesn't go down until about 9pm right now.

And let's now forget the fact that from various points of the city you can see this........

It's a little hazy but those big things in the background are the Andes mountains.  About 6000m high.  Unfortunately Santiago is bordered on all sides by mountains, the lowest being 2000m.  As a result all the pollution gets trapped down in the city resulting in the haze you can see in the picture.  As they continue to work on improving the output from the cars and buses and such like it will get better but it'll take some time.

So as my little notes before have said, I landed here at 5am on Friday after a 6 hour flight from Panama that I did actually sleep for a lot of, that being said I was absolutely exhausted and, unsurprisingly the hotel didn't have a room ready so I was waiting around for a few hours.  Some of that time was filled with a tour of the city and it's a beautiful city in some areas with old architecture with British, French, German and Spanish influence.

National library

Palacios de la moneda - presidential palace.  It used to be the mint, hence the 'moneda' in the name

Plaza de Armas - on the left the cathedral, straigh ahead the post office

Inside the Cathedral

Quite a fancy post office!

So after all this I got back to the hotel and thankfully they had a room ready for me by 1pm which was a relief for sure.  I was absolutely exhausted so I went, unpacked and lay down to rest - making sure I set an alarm!  An hour later the alarm went off and an hour after that I was finally at a point where I was able to move and think (well move anyway).

So with that in mind it was off to find some food, and maybe a drink or two........

Santiago really makes the most of the Bella Vista area as well as many others with some great outside seating in front of the bars and restaurants, not to mention the restaurants are really good!

So it was, after a couple of pisco sours (very good) and a big bowl of what I would guess is the Chilean equivalent of shepherds pie, except with mashed corn instead of potato on top, I meandered off in search of somewhere I could get a nice glass of wine to finish off the night.

Sadly the picture doesn't show it too well but that's a half bottle of a very nice carmenere wine.  Sadly empty at the point this picture was taken :o)

So ended the day, with a slightly stumbling walk home through a very pleasant, wine induced fog.  Great town, good buzz, good transportation and actually a few people that speak English :o)