More vaca photos

Because - I haven't shown you anything other than Santiago.

This fountain is in the Parque de Las Esculuras. It is beautiful during the day but at night they have a light show and the fountain has different configurations - I guess sort of like in Vegas at the Bellagio, only not so big, no music and in South America. It was another popular make out part of town . Our hotel was about a 2 minute block away and the subway stop was right across the street - very convenient.

This is me shopping at the craft market in Santa Lucia - see Shana - I really was in Santiago! I don't look very happy but I really loved this place. A lot of local artisans and very reasonable prices for most things. Plus they had security guards in here so there were no pick pockets. There were probably 200 vendors in this market - we went back at least 3 times. the photo to the right is the outside of the market from the Santa Lucia park. As you can see our visit was the same time of the release of Angels and Demons.

To the right is about half way up to the top of the Santa Lucia park. It was a beautiful hike and you could go all the way to the top (we did) or stop at any number of terraces on the way up (which we also did).

We felt very safe wandering around and really did not have much of a problem - except for the Pepcid lift. We were walking around with a backpack (translation = tourist who has something in the backpack I can rip off). Several vendors told us to watch out & wear the pack in the front but did we listen? No. We wondered around quite confident until we came into the Central Market for lunch. Some locals pointed at our back pack & we noticed the small pocket was unzipped. I panicked because I had our iPod charger, camera UBS cord, Pepcid & Advil in that pocket. All that was missing - the Pepcid. Which concerned me because we were in the land of pisco sours & much red wine. But then I thought why the hell did I need to carry all that crap around? in a backpack? My purse (yes the whole purse, not just my wallet) was in the big pocket and fine but Hubby & I both felt pretty stupid - we both know better than to be such an obvious target. So we ate our lunch at Donde Augusto in the Mercado Central. We had some very nummy fresh fish - the place was loud and lively. We wanted to wander around some more and with the pack in front - we headed out on the street. It was very strange because all of a sudden I stopped - I could "feel" 3 guys watching us - sure enough they were following us and I am sure hoping to rip us off again. I had our camera dangling from my wrist (duh -obvious target again) and we both looked a little freaked. I did not know what to do so we ducked into a yarn store to re-group. 2 different locals came in and in broken English told us were were being followed and to be careful, hide the camera, watch our money, etc. I nervously picked out a couple of skeins of yarn, paid for them and tried to figure out what to do next. We wanted to go to a coffee place - they have cafes called "coffee with legs" and I was intrigued. Basically they are like strip clubs but with coffee(no booze), the girls don't have much clothes on to start with and they leave on what they have. So we found one and went inside (the guys were still following us). It was the best coffee we had our entire trip (the norm is instant Nescafe - yuk!) but it felt strange to have a very scantily clad young girl, maybe 18, make us a couple of cappachinos then do a little dance in front of us under the black light. She was a very sweet girl but I wanted to leave. We went back out & I wanted to get a picture of the front of the cafe and my camera battery died! I looked around and sure enough saw two of our stalkers. I decided right then - damn it I would dig in my back pack and get new batteries, I would take my picture and stare them down the whole time. Which is what we did. I did not want to show them we were intimidated. We walked a few blocks and they dropped off. So to the left is the picture we took of our cafes con piernas (coffee with legs).

That's it for today. While unpacking I found two post cards we did not send so popped them in the mail to the Scaleys' and Miss Lillie B - I hope you noticed the stamp !

More vaca photos

I wasn't going to post twice today but Hubby made me a martini, then started watching a documentary on Chinese war tactics...BORING!

This is a beautiful park in Santiago called Santa Lucia. It is as lovely as this photo suggests. We went there several times - you can hike up some old stone stairs to the top of the mountain and look over Santiago. We did that later in the trip - this day we were on the 1/2 day city tour. Our guide was great - I think his name was Roberto and I'm sad to say I did not take his photos - he turned us on to some great bars in Belle Vista neighborhood and some pretty decent local micro brew. But first they had a "special surprise" for us. We soon learned that "special sup rises usually meant something either very hokey or a stop at a store that we could buy special souvenirs. This tour had both. First - the re-enactment of the taking of Santiago - artfully (sort of ) done by this troupe of actors. It was pretty dramatic and we went with the flow by watching, although all the locals that were there were snickering at us tourists.

This park is where the locals go to make out - and there are couples EVERYWHERE kissing away. We figured it was because they wouldn't be allowed to behave that way at their parent's house - but it was Ok in public. I managed to sneak a quick kiss with Hubby - quite begrudgingly I might add. But I didn't marry him for his romance.. The guy in the orange shirt was the story teller - he used his cell phone as a microphone which was curious. We also saw several groups of college kids practicing some sword play stuff here - it was a little strange, Darwin also visited this hill so it's pretty significant.

This fountain is sort of in the middle of the park and is very beautiful. We fell in love with all the architecture.

This is the view of Santiago from another park - their main park in the city, Parque Metropolitano. It was pretty smoggy - normal for the city as it is surrounded by mountains but we thought it was beautiful. In the summer it is "unbearable" whatever that means to them, we did not find it to be a problem but it was late fall for Santiago - temps in the 70's during the day; 50's at night - perfect!

More tomorrow!

We have Internet, we are home safe!

Boy - it's been awhile. Well, we made it home with little drama and our phone line was all messed up so no DSL so no Internet. I can't post at work and keep my job so I had to wait until we got our phone all fixed. So - now I can post some vaca photos but it may take me a couple of posts - I took over 200 photos! Promise - I'll try to hit the high spots.

This is Stone Mountain - our surprise first day of vacation in Atlanta. It was not a bad side trip but I would never go to this place in the summer - it would be crowded as hell.

This is a bad photo of the very cool walking trail up one side of the mountain. It is all granite and very cool, actually very hot in the sun. I wish we would have known about this so we could have walked the whole thing - but alas South America was calling our name.

We arrived in Chile about 8:00AM ( flew overnight) and after about 2 hours getting through immigration, we had to get off the plane and get our first Oh My God They May Have Swine Flu test, we went to the passport line, waited for 20 minutes only to be sent back to the Pay Us $120 to enter Chile line. Hubby paid for us and we were back to the passport line. We got to our hotel took a about a 2 hour nap (nothing gets moving until around 11:00) and headed down to the Central Market on our own. We booked a half day city tour for later but wanted to see what we could see first. This was a big open sea food market with restaurants inside. It was very smelly but clean in a stinky fish market kind of way.

This fountain is outside the market and in the area of the pick- pocket dudes. We didn't notice them the first couple of times we were down there but I am certain they noticed us. Still, the whole pedestrian walkway was very cool and I didn't flash my camera around too much here.

This photo is the top of the Metropolitan Church in the Plaza De Armes - an open square filled with artists, cafes and a great place to people watch. We did duck in the door way of the church - it was beautiful for a church. And because my photo of it isn't that great - I found this one to the right for you.

The area was really fun and we enjoyed a few pisco sours sitting at an outdoor cafe. The photo below is the post office, I loved the architecture of the old buildings up against the very modern, glass office building. This square was really beautiful and is probably where I fell in love with Santiago.

That's it for tonight - I got started posting late and we are starting the gym at 5:30AM thing again since we ate and drank our way through South America....but I'll share more over the weekend.