Dia de San Patricio

Santiago, Chile

This being Saint Patrick's Day, I was feeling lucky, so I asked Deano if I could take over the blog post.  We are still working on catching up to the time zone we are in, even Dex and Kylie were slug-a-bugs this morning.  At 10 a.m., Dean had enough of waiting on us and started lifting blinds and making noise after his run; he seems to be more on track than the rest of us.  Show off.

Morning in Santiago

Once we were all up and moving, we made plans to purchase tickets farther south to Patagonia. This requires plane tickets and two bus rides.  Tomorrow we'll take one plane and one bus to get us to Puerto Natales.  The plane tickets needed to be purchased from a SKY Airlines counter, as we had trouble completing the transaction online.  Conveniently, there was an office near us.  We took a round about way to get to the SKY ticket counter, however, going past a beautiful urban park, complete with fountains and a lovely statue of Abraham Lincoln.  The kids also found a couple of playgrounds, and the most fun was had running through water sprinklers.

Santiago is a great city, from what we've seen, and a big one.  Dean was commenting that the entire population of New Zealand, five million, would fit into Santiago.  The mountains in the background are lovely, though being summer, it is hazy and not very easy to see them.  The city itself has a European feel -- older buildings, bricked roads, lots of neat cafe's and people out walking and enjoying it all.

After a quick lunch at the Mosqueto Cafe (same as yesterday's lunch spot), we decided to check out the Art Museum.  We had seen it on the day we arrived and finally had the time to go through it. There were some fantastic sculptures in the main room.  My favorite was a sculpture of a young girl with a wonderful carefree and mischievous expression... reminded me of a certain girl I know and love.  Another neat one was of a boy and his lamb.  The boy was holding a stick and Kylie noticed that on the ground by his feet, he was using the stick to draw a picture of his lamb.  That seemed so real to me - I loved it.

Another neat exhibit was showing a kids painting class that worked one day a month for a year on making a depiction of the teacher's work, who happened to be an artist.  It was impressive to see the end results!  We determined that, as a family, we might try to find a painting class.  The kids have gotten pretty good with drawing and Dean has always had an interest in it.  I don't want to miss out on the artistic outlet and family time.

The museum was small and there wasn't much else that struck us, so we took the walk to the number one attraction in Santiago, the funicular up to Parque Metropolitano.  While at first the kids were less than thrilled, being on the funicular and seeing the city from the highest point was pretty nifty.  The park was quite large, heralded as the largest urban park in the world, with many runners, walkers, and bikers all about.  We took a stroll along the upper portion, and, with an eye on the time for the final funicular at 7:45, we were able to also take a beautiful tram ride to head back toward the funicular, with 20 minutes to spare.

Kylie and some killer bees

Now, I know that I'm not the engineer in the family, but it doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the cool workings of a funicular.  It is quite a good plan, actually. There are two passenger cars on either end of the hill, connected by a cable and running on a rail.  At the center of the track, there is a split in the rail with one car going left and one car going right.  The cars act as a counterbalance to each other and in this fashion, people are able to be moved up and down with not a whole lot of electricity... at least that's how I think it works.

On the way back, we passed a number of bars with many St. Patrick's Day attendees.  It seems there are quite a lot of Irish Chileans!  I feel that we are the lucky ones getting to explore this large, unique and colorful city.  Loads of painted buildings, colorful graffiti, great cafes and restaurants.  It's nice to be in the heart of it all.  Tomorrow, with the luck of the Irish still with us, we'll get to see even more of this beautiful country.  I can't wait!