Santiago

After spending the past month in Patagonia, arriving in Santiago has made me realise how fun it was to be in a city again.

I've been lucky to meet two English girls who live in Santiago, and one of them Robyn invited me to stay at her apartment for a few days. Her apartment was in Las Condes which is a really nice part of town 👌🏼

We also met the other English girl Lucy and went for food at Parque Arauco which is a shopping centre that reminded me of Westfields in Stratford. It even had a TopShop and I felt so at home (although I'm too poor to actually buy anything). We ate really good Peruvian food and it was so nice to have the gang from carnaval back together again. In the evening we went on a hilarious night out to Casa Jungay and ended up getting home at 6am. The next day was a bit of a write off (we didn't make it to brunch but I might go next when in Santiago!) but it was such a fun evening.

The following day I met up with Lucy and Hattie and we went to look at some cool street art in Museo A Cielo Abierto. After we went to Santa Lucia for coffee and cake, and to walk up and see one of the city's viewpoints. Santiago as a city itself very pretty but it is surrounded by the Andes mountains range. In the evening I met up with Robyn and her friend Alana and we went for more drinks - this time we got buckets of mojitos and piscolas and a huge plate of chips with meat (so good).

The next day I moved into a hostel because Robyn's mum was coming to stay for her birthday. I arranged to stay in the same hostel as the couple I first met in Iguazu (Lucy and Andy). As they were arriving later in the afternoon, in the day I met up with Sam who I met in Pucón and we went to the museum about Chile's dictatorship in the 1970s. It was really interesting but I was feeling a bit hungover and we got the audio tapes which went on a bit. After we got ice cream and I went back to my hostel and waited for Lucy and Andy to arrive 😃 (I was so excited as I had such a fun time with them in Buenos Aires). When they arrived it was soo nice to see them again and we caught up on everything we'd done since we last saw each other.

Deciding we wanted to have good pizza which has been hard to come by up until now, we managed to find a really great Italian restaurant that even did mozzarella dippers. The pizza was spot on and we had lots of wine to go with. After 4 days of drinking I was supposed to be going to Valparaiso the next day but sacked it off in favour of just doing nothing and getting ready for Easter Island as I had to be up at 3am the next day to go to the airport.

All in all, Santiago was really fun - so nice to catch up with people that I've met along the way and of course, meet even more new people. I wouldn't say there is a lot to do in terms of site seeing but it's like London in that it's a really fun place to go out to eat or drink. That being said, I've eaten and drunk far too much and now I'm looking forward to reigning it in a little over the next few days at least.Read more