Today was Dan’s last day in Chile, and the weather cooperated by being spectacular — clear and sunny all the way from Valpo back to Santiago. We had a leisurely morning at the Hostal, packing, lingering on our balcony and waiting for my clothes to dry. Then we made our way to Cafe Brighton, where Dan did some sketching and I journaled. We discovered that the cafe offers live music on weekend nights; with the panoramic views from its patio, it’d be a great place to spend an evening.
A last photo from our rooftop:
Then it was goodbye to Valpo, and we walked the mile or two to the bus station, roller suitcases clattering behind us, because the weather was so fine.
Dan really liked this store’s signage:
The bus ride back offered clear views of the Casablanca Valley, a major production area for Chilean wine.
We discovered, to our delight, that Hotel Ibis, where we’d be spending the night, was right around the corner from the Alameda bus station. The view from our window is below — incredible. We parked our bags in the room for the night and headed back out into Santiago.
We’d wanted to visit the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, a new museum that memorializes the Pinochet years. But it was closed due to the presidential primaries being held today. (Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s first woman president defeated in the last election, won in her party’s primary; Pablo Longueira won in his.) Instead, we walked from Ibis to Quinta Normal, a large park that’s especially popular among families. The walk there was thoroughly depressing, up trash-laden Matucana from the Alameda. But the district right around the park was like a Chilean University Circle, filled with museums (including the closed Memoria) and institutions. Quinta Normal, the park, also charmed us. Kids hopped through sporadically erupting fountains, people strolled in the sunset, and we even spotted some eco-friendly stormwater design for the tree planters.
Here’s the human rights museum, in a renowned contemporary building by Brazilian architects Estudio America:
I loved this building, housing the theater company M100. How it reuses part of an old building while making a contemporary statement — something I’d love to see more of in Cleveland.
The area was fairly restaurant-free, though, and we were pretty hungry. So we wielded our BIP card, held over from the last time we were in the city, and took the Metro back to Bellas Artes, “our neighborhood.” We sat down at Cafe Mosquedo on Avenida Mosquedo and had “sandwich” (that’s also the plural in Spanish) and a delicious and much-needed green salad. The place was a real hipster hot-spot, full of people with ostentatious glasses, with a wonderful mellow atmosphere.
We also stumbled on a fantastic comic/graphic novel shop with the perfect name Plop! They sold traditional graphic novels along with stand-alone prints and drawings by Chilean artists.
After dinner, we returned to Emporio La Rosa, our ice cream place, named one of the 25 best ice cream shops in the world by The Daily Meal. We ate (freezing, but deliciously so) in a spot we’d enjoyed previously in Parque Forestal, in front of a fountain/statue of Ruben Dario. Then we hopped back on the Metro and got Dan back to the hotel so he could shower and catch a bus to the airport. Of course I felt very sad to see him walking down the hall.
Apart from Dan leaving, this was probably my favorite night in Santiago. The weather helped, but I also felt like we knew enough about the city now to enjoy it in a relaxed way, instead of charging around wondering where the heck we were. This is a city that reveals itself slowly, I think. It’s reserved, like the people and the country themselves. I felt more relaxed today myself — as if I were finally unclenching from the intense busy-ness of the week leading up to my departure.
