Santiago

We came to Santiago because it was from where we could easily catch a flight to Easter Island and so decided to only spend a couple of nights here. Another mistake. Maria from our allotment site (well originally from Chile) and her friend Elaine said we would love it and want to spend more time here. They were right. It is a very sophisticated city (must be, we’ve seen a number of Audis), a very cosmopolitan city (must be, it has people speaking French and good Italian restaurants) and a very modern city (must be, it has bendy buses – Boris is so wrong to get rid of them from London, no let us rephrase that, Boris is so wrong full stop). Despite being a very busy and built up city, it has some very lovely green spaces and many trees. Some of the modern architecture is excellent.
We have spent the day walking around the city, stopping for lunch at one of the many restaurants in the Mercado Central, which incidentally was designed in Chile but built in England and shipped over in 1870, where we had ceviche (and some more Chilean wine – Santa Rita Sauvignon Blanc and very nice it was too, Barry). First of all we went to the Palacio de la Moneda, the presidential palace, where we had to show our passports to get in and Gregg had to have a drink from his water bottle to show that it wasn’t explosive. The guide book said it is considered to be one of the finest examples of colonial public building on the sub-continent, we thought it was on a par with Waltham Forest Town Hall, however the soldiers in their dress uniforms were much smarter than the porters at WFTH!
We also visited the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, which has an excellent collection of objects from the pre-Columbian cultures of Central and South America, so we got to see items from cultures other than the ones we have been visiting. Again there were many fine examples of ceramics but unless we get a special request from David B we won’t be posting anymore photographs.
A bizarre thing about Santiago is sleeping dogs, which lie around everywhere in the city and people just step around them. We couldn’t work out whether they belonged to anyone but they all looked well cared for and very happy.

Let sleeping dogs lie because tomorrow we fly.