We walk down a ways to get a good feel for the different restaurants available to us. We settle on a genuine Texas BBQ restaurant. How can we not? About as unexpected as a brilliant $10 live theater show; however, we find this BBQ to be quite blah. We’d have been better off with the McDonalds.
After eating we get straight in line because they are already boarding our aircraft.These planes must have shrunk dramatically in recent years. This American Airlines 767 is the most uncomfortable plane we have ever sat in. We wedge in our seats and think happy thoughts for the next 9 hours.
When we land we are happy as whores at a lawyer convention to be there.Everyone is obviously feeling the same way as we make a number of friends in the immigration lines. 
Day 1 has melted into day 2. After about 2 hours in the airport lines, we take a taxi to our Radisson Plaza hotel room in Santiago’s World Trade Center building. After our early check in, we try logging on to our internet account to post that we are all right. We can’t get the AT&T to work. Instead of fighting with it we go on our excursion and decide to try again later.
We take a taxi to the Plaza de Armas to begin the walking tour Todd compiled with his pre-honeymoon research. The Plaza de Armas is the civic nucleus of the country. Its importance is such that all distances to other parts of the country are still, to this day, measured from here. At left is a statue in the plaza of Pedro de Valdivia, the founder of Chile.
One of the sculptures that really piqued our interest in the plaza is this one: Create your own title for this work.
We walked up through a Saturday Market setting in search of our first meal since the early airplane breakfast. It was on this street where we played a rousing game of Chilean Pinball. It’s an exciting game where you, the tourist, are the pinball - and the flippers and bumpers are played each week by the locals. It was very hard for us to actually get a good feel for the buildings and their architecture, or for that matter the goods for sale literally lying on the streets on sheets and blankets. We were too busy bouncing off of the people. The hilarious part was that they were not touching each other whatsoever! Like busy little ants with antennae probing out the sonar waves of their contemporaries, they steered clear of each other and proceeded to pound us. And it wasn’t like a major American city where bumping into people requires an apology, or at least an acknowledgement. Just bump bump bump, and on your way. 
Well, we (the plinko chips) finally happened upon our destination; a major fish market / restaurant in the city, “Donde Augusto”. It reminded us both of Seattle’s Pike Place Market.
You walk through a big fish market and then come to a giant open air chamber filled with multiple restaurants; each with a salesman type trying to funnel the traffic into his own restaurant. We came to one guy who spoke English and so we went with him. As he sat us he professed his love of the Beach Boys and introduced us to our non-English speaking waiter who we lovingly called Roberto Benigni. He was a delightful man. When we had troubles communicating our order, he retrieved our Beach Boy fan as a translator. The suggestion was a “taste of Chile” variety seafood platter to share. IT WAS WONDERFUL! We found out on our first day in Chile why it is known for its seafood. There was one item on the plate that neither one of us was fond of though. It was some breed of crustacean – sort of like a snail – with heavy gage whiskers intertwined with the meat. We didn’t ask. 
We then made our way back past the Plaza de Armas, and down several tree lined pedestrian streets to the “Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino”, or the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. Fascinating pieces here and the really great thing was that all of the plaques describing the works were in both Spanish and English. 
Continuing south we came to the “Palacio de Gobierno”, or the Governors Palace. This was the largest building erected by the Spanish government in the 18th century. It was also the site of the September 11, 1973 coup d’etat led by Augusto Pinochet.
Well, we (the plinko chips) finally happened upon our destination; a major fish market / restaurant in the city, “Donde Augusto”. It reminded us both of Seattle’s Pike Place Market.
You walk through a big fish market and then come to a giant open air chamber filled with multiple restaurants; each with a salesman type trying to funnel the traffic into his own restaurant. We came to one guy who spoke English and so we went with him. As he sat us he professed his love of the Beach Boys and introduced us to our non-English speaking waiter who we lovingly called Roberto Benigni. He was a delightful man. When we had troubles communicating our order, he retrieved our Beach Boy fan as a translator. The suggestion was a “taste of Chile” variety seafood platter to share. IT WAS WONDERFUL! We found out on our first day in Chile why it is known for its seafood. There was one item on the plate that neither one of us was fond of though. It was some breed of crustacean – sort of like a snail – with heavy gage whiskers intertwined with the meat. We didn’t ask. 
We then made our way back past the Plaza de Armas, and down several tree lined pedestrian streets to the “Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino”, or the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. Fascinating pieces here and the really great thing was that all of the plaques describing the works were in both Spanish and English. 
Continuing south we came to the “Palacio de Gobierno”, or the Governors Palace. This was the largest building erected by the Spanish government in the 18th century. It was also the site of the September 11, 1973 coup d’etat led by Augusto Pinochet.
Across the street we saw this
and were reminded of Brittany:
Gotta love this guy!
We then made our way to the “Bolsa de Commercio”. 
This is the Chilean stock exchange. It is a triangular building of spectacular architectural design. We gave up on trying to decipher the date on this:Anyone proficient in Roman numerals?
This is the Chilean stock exchange. It is a triangular building of spectacular architectural design. We gave up on trying to decipher the date on this:Anyone proficient in Roman numerals? 
We took many pictures of buildings in this city. Among them, this is Denise’s favorite. She’s very proud of the “artsy” nature of it and plans to make a jigsaw puzzle are in the works.Somehow, we were reminded of the Brady’s trip to Hawaii.
We made it to the “Iglesia de San Francisco”, or the church of San Francisco.This is the oldest standing building in Santiago.We can’t post all of the pictures of it here, but needless to say we were both very impressed by this church. We continued our trek North and East, passing several little parks on the way. To say we saw a couple dry humping on the grass would be like saying we saw a grain of sand while in Malibu. 
This was a Saturday, so maybe it’s just a weekend thing. Maybe the clothed public sex thing isn’t as prevalent on weekdays. No complaints though. It just enriched the ambiance of the city. Dry humping and stray dogs everywhere!!
We stopped to rest our feet in the “Parque Forestal” because by this point we were a good 6-7 hours into this walking tour. Again, it was hard not to look at the couples. The dogs, however, were all very meek. They didn’t bother anyone. Rested a little now, we continued to the “Funnicular”, or tram, to the top of the hill at Cerro San Cristobal.
Wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing was down for repairs. Nobody speaks English and we’re very tired of walking at this point. No way we were walking up this huge “hill”. We take a taxi up and are very glad we did. We didn’t realize how long of a trip it was to the peak; very deceiving from the base. Once at the top we found just how huge this statue really is that overlooks the city. We stopped to rest again and enjoyed a local treat with a name that eludes us at this time. It was a scoop of oatmeal and a couple of peach halves in a glass of tea. We really enjoyed this. Then we took the tram down the other side:
From the base it was a short walk to a restaurant Todd had in mind for the evening’s meal. We were so very tired of walking by this point that when we didn’t find it after about 15 minutes, we just decided to walk back to the Radisson and eat at the restaurant there. This was decent food but very pricey, the portions were teeny tiny and the service was exceptionally lousy. Afterward, we hung out in the cigar bar and relaxed before retiring. This is where we enjoyed our first Pisco Sour. It’s kind of like a limoncello / whiskey sour hybrid. This is the official drink of Chile. How cool for a nation to have an official alchoholic beverage!! And a very tasty one at that. We checked with the desk about wi-fi and they told us that wireless internet was free. Username = last name, and password = room #. This didn’t work either. Todd took from this to mean that the problem must be with the computer, not the AT&T service. Denise disagreed and thought the problem must be with the AT&T service; a disagreement that would last throughout until we got home to find the real problem.
This was a Saturday, so maybe it’s just a weekend thing. Maybe the clothed public sex thing isn’t as prevalent on weekdays. No complaints though. It just enriched the ambiance of the city. Dry humping and stray dogs everywhere!!We stopped to rest our feet in the “Parque Forestal” because by this point we were a good 6-7 hours into this walking tour. Again, it was hard not to look at the couples. The dogs, however, were all very meek. They didn’t bother anyone. Rested a little now, we continued to the “Funnicular”, or tram, to the top of the hill at Cerro San Cristobal.
Wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing was down for repairs. Nobody speaks English and we’re very tired of walking at this point. No way we were walking up this huge “hill”. We take a taxi up and are very glad we did. We didn’t realize how long of a trip it was to the peak; very deceiving from the base. Once at the top we found just how huge this statue really is that overlooks the city. We stopped to rest again and enjoyed a local treat with a name that eludes us at this time. It was a scoop of oatmeal and a couple of peach halves in a glass of tea. We really enjoyed this. Then we took the tram down the other side:From the base it was a short walk to a restaurant Todd had in mind for the evening’s meal. We were so very tired of walking by this point that when we didn’t find it after about 15 minutes, we just decided to walk back to the Radisson and eat at the restaurant there. This was decent food but very pricey, the portions were teeny tiny and the service was exceptionally lousy. Afterward, we hung out in the cigar bar and relaxed before retiring. This is where we enjoyed our first Pisco Sour. It’s kind of like a limoncello / whiskey sour hybrid. This is the official drink of Chile. How cool for a nation to have an official alchoholic beverage!! And a very tasty one at that. We checked with the desk about wi-fi and they told us that wireless internet was free. Username = last name, and password = room #. This didn’t work either. Todd took from this to mean that the problem must be with the computer, not the AT&T service. Denise disagreed and thought the problem must be with the AT&T service; a disagreement that would last throughout until we got home to find the real problem.
