<< Tatio Geysers (Part 4 - Coda With Movies)

04/10/12 - Last Day in Santiago

Since our flight home left Santiago at two o'clock in the morning, we planned our final day carefully. We started with a walk around Santiago on Easter Sunday. We expected everything to be closed, but it turns out that the Cerro Santa Lucia, the original fort built when the city was founded in the 16th century, was open. It was a trip backwards in time with the formal garden near street level and staircases leading upwards to the fountain of Neptune and then higher to a terrace and finally up to an old church and the old look out tower. The view of the city was quite impressive.

We headed down and wandered onwards. As the Cerro Santa Lucia was near the train station, we discovered a number of stores were opening even on this most serious of holidays. There was a department store, a pharmacy, a small supermarket and the inevitable television and electronic gadgets store. Santiago is a big city, so Easter Sunday or not, you could do a bit of shopping.

You could also go to church. We passed a number of churches, and the main cathedral was pretty full as the service went on. It was strange to see autumn flowers, like chrysanthemums, instead of spring flowers, like lilies, decorating the church. Off the main square, some vendors had already set up their stands selling remaindered books and oddball figurines, none particularly Easter related.

We did find the Museum of National History which we had missed on our previous visit to the area. It was open and full of old portraits, weapons, household items and documents from Chile's history. It started with the early Spanish settlement, went on through the revolution, and soon we were looking at dial telephones and manual typerwriters. Wow, we are getting old.

We made our way back to our hotel for lunch at a Peruvian restaurant which was right down the block. Our hotel, The Aubrey, was in Bellavista which is probably one's best bet for a meal on a holiday like Easter Sunday. Constitution, our street, and the Bellavista Patio were full of restaurants and happy diners. Then we took a long nap. Remember, our flight home was at two o'clock in the morning, so we needed all the sleep we could get. Then, well after sunset, we woke up, finished packing, grabbed a bite at the hotel, and made our way to the airport. The next 20 or so hours we spent in airplanes or airport lounges, and that would only get us to Seattle.

The lower level of Cerro Santa Lucia

The Neptune level

A terrace even higher - This one had cannons.

Even higher

And higher still

That's the castle we visited.

That's our hotel's terrace, where we had our final meal in Santiago.

Keywords: chile