average photos of cool places: 02/13/12

Hola gringos!

We have been in Santiago now for four days. The first night was spent in 5 star luxury at the Hyatt. The hotel was stunning, with views of the Andes and an awesome lagoon style pool. We allowed ourselves to holiday honeymoon style for one night and booked massages and ate at fine dining restaurants (and of course ordered room service breakfast). The Hyatt is in a lovely expensive area of Santiago where there is no evidence of the distinct divide between the rich and the ever so poor. It was pure middle class bliss!

Our first dinner in Santiago was at a lovely seafood restaurant which was incredibly cheap considering the 5,000 staff waiting on us. The service was so impressive and made only more amazing by the fact that they made our salad dressing at the table (don’t worry mother, I checked that they washed the lettuce in bottled water and patted it dry whilst wearing hepatitis blocking gloves). Our waiter was also very helpful when it came to selecting wine by letting us know that we were foolish and cheap arse gringos and had ordered some of the crappiest wine on their menu. He sighed tolerably and suggested a delicious red around 'that' price range that we wish we remembered the name of.

This lovely social oblivion was soon shattered once we moved to our hostel. We stayed in an area called Bellavista known for its many restaurants and lively bar scene (read pushy restaurateurs and drunk backpackers). It is also home to the majority of hostels in Santiago and therefore the most Australians outside of Australia. We also discovered that an insanely large population of homeless dogs inhabit the area. We managed to hold back our desire to pat every single one of them but we would like to note that they were foam free around the mouth and we have both had our rabies shots so we feel that we will be fine when our will power fails us. We are pretty sure the lettuce will get us before the rabies does.

One of our many fried seafood meals!

Of course Marc chose a restaurant with a ship in it.

One of the many classy establishments in Barrio Bellavista. They provide an education of the more fluid kind.

Cafe culture Barrio Bellavista style.

We have both been feeling quite jetlagged since arrival but for the hours that we did manage to stay awake we explored some of the truly touristy areas such as San Cristobal Hill (which included a massive 1.5 hour hike in the sun up to the top only to realize there was a: shortcuts available and b: a cable car which took you to the top in around 2 minutes); Plaza de Armas (not overly interesting but we did discover PIZZA CONES); and Santa Lucia Hill (pretty much another park on another hill). We did visit one of Pablo Neruda’s houses (he has three in Chile) which was lovely and made us feel all cultural and stuff.