{"id":1319,"date":"2015-11-22T07:24:37","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T14:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2015-11-22T07:24:37","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T14:24:37","slug":"its-skinny-with-lots-of-strays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=1319","title":{"rendered":"It’s Skinny with Lots of Strays"},"content":{"rendered":"
Chile is very, very thin – only 150 miles at it’s widest part.\u00a0 Santiago is a city of old and new\u00a0and has\u00a0smog many days due to the Andes\u00a0& other mountain ranges that\u00a0envelope the city.\u00a0\u00a0The country is\u00a0also the most earthquake prone area in the world.There are lots of buildings that\u00a0shout out that\u00a0Chile is clearly a\u00a0 third-world country; yet, there are a few gorgeous government buildings that have a 19th century neoclassical\u00a0French\u00a0architecture sprinkled around the city.\u00a0 There are also some spectacular new modern skyscrapers outside the central business district (aka in foreign countries as the CBD)\u00a0including the Gran Torre Santiago which is the tallest skyscraper in Latin America.\u00a0 We had debated on whether we should stay right\u00a0in the CBD and we were glad that we decided against it.\u00a0 It is simply comprised of a few office buildings (most are outside the CBD), not many restaurants and lots of older buildings.\u00a0 The fast flowing, brown\u00a0Mapocho River divides the city along economic and cultural lines.\u00a0\u00a0It does appear that the city is becoming\u00a0 cosmopolitan; however, it will take time.\u00a0 The city has gone through quite a bit of political upheaval and was under a military dictatorship from the early 1970’s until 1990.\u00a0 Most tourist, like us, have to spend a few days in Santiago in order to catch a plane to Easter Island (our next stop) or the Patagonia region.<\/div>\n
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During our three night, two day stay\u00a0in Santiago, we did two walking tours:\u00a0 an historical tour\u00a0as well as an “offbeat” tour.\u00a0 Santiago is loaded with stray dogs who\u00a0 joined us on both tours.\u00a0 Both tours\u00a0were around 4 hours and quite informative.\u00a0 The historical tour highlighted the history, culture and political attractions of the city.\u00a0 We started the walk at the Plaza de Arms, Santiago’s main square and one of the most picturesque areas of the CBD.\u00a0 The most impressive building housed both the museum of fine arts and the museum of contemporary art.\u00a0 We eventually made our way to a neighborhood\u00a0of Santiago called Bellevista.\u00a0 It was our favorite area in the city!\u00a0 It is the home to two universities.\u00a0\u00a0Barrio Bellevista has a real bohemian feel to it with lots of great restaurants.\u00a0 We had\u00a0a few delicious meals in this area.\u00a0\u00a0Chileans love BIG portions of food.\u00a0 Just about every restaurant we visited, the food was piled high on the plates.\u00a0\u00a0We did not see too many thin Chileans in Santiago.\u00a0 An interesting and one of\u00a0Chile’s most famous dishes is called BIstec a lo pobre.\u00a0 It is an enormous platter of french fries, fried onions, topped with beef and\u00a0 four fried eggs.\u00a0 We watched a couple being served this dish and we couldn’t believe that they were\u00a0aggressively devouring\u00a0the entire dish except for the plate.\u00a0\u00a0The calories have to be astronomical!<\/div>\n
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After the tour and lunch, we headed over to Cerro San Cristobal for a 4 mile hike up and down the mountain.\u00a0 It is the second highest point in the city and offered some great views of Santiago.\u00a0 There is a funicular going up to the top; but, we opted to do the steep\u00a0climb.<\/div>\n
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\"Church<\/a>
Church in City Square<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Presidential<\/a>
Presidential Palace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Gift<\/a>
Gift from Germany<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"San<\/a>
San Cristobal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Santiago\"<\/a>
Santiago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Smoggy<\/a>
Smoggy Santiago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Santiago\"<\/a>
Santiago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Street<\/a>
Street Art<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Chile is very, very thin – only 150 miles at it’s widest part.\u00a0 Santiago is a city of old and new\u00a0and has\u00a0smog many days due to the Andes\u00a0& other mountain ranges that\u00a0envelope the city.\u00a0\u00a0The country is\u00a0also the most earthquake prone area in the world.There are lots of buildings that\u00a0shout out that\u00a0Chile is clearly a\u00a0 third-world … Continue reading It’s Skinny with Lots of Strays<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Si9J-lh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1347,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}