Valparaiso

Today Juliet and I were meant to get the bus to Valparaiso, the neighbouring town but after waiting about ten minutes for the bus we remembered why we prefer the metro and chose that to take us into the city. Our first stop was ascensor conception, the oldest funicular in Chile and went up the conception barros (hills) to see the view.

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It was actually amazing that there is a whole little town up there, we had to pay and wait for the slow cable tram but even so there’s people who do that everyday. There’s houses, little restaurants and even a hotel looking over the whole pier.

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Once we were back at normal level, we got the train to the docks that we’d just been looking over and found a restaurant resting on the cliffs over the sea. The sun came out and we had a beautiful view. Here we decided to try empanadas, which is basically Spanish pie and then afterwards some local freshly caught fish (although I had salmon… So maybe not so local), as eating seafood is always better by the sea.

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Once we had bussed back to Santiago, we had our first night out in South America! We first went to a terrace on the top of someone’s apartment for drinks with the most incredible view over Santiago and then went out to a club. Normally I would have been quite worried about going out here since no one is blonde and so even just walked down the street I get a lot of stares, but as we were out with a big group of none Chileans we were perfectly safe and it was a fun night. So much so that it’s 12.30pm and we’ve all only just woken up…

Ps. Apparently there’s a shop in Santiago that sells Waitrose food! And the guys that we’re living with have Waitrose peanut butter so I am so happy this morning munching away!