Pablo and the walking tour

Today was Monday and every museum was closed in Santiago. As such we decided that it would be fun to do a walking tour of downtown Edmonton. There was an interesting one advertised on the Air BnB website with Pablo who it turned out had lived in Edmonton for a year back in 2015 when he had a temporary visa. He had worked at Eddie Bauer in downtown Edmonton and washed dishes. We met Pablo at the presidential palace and while waiting for the tour to start caught part of the changing of the guard with soldiers and a marching band. It started off very solomnly with traditional marching band music but then loosened up with some Disney music. For the first part of the talk we learned about the dysfunctional history of Chilean politics with mismanagement from both the left and right culminating in a coup when Salvatore Allamande was overthrown by Augusta Pinochet in 1973 resulting in 17 years of military dictatorship.

After our history lesson we toured around the government centre visiting the chief justice building, the congressional building and the national library. All very large ornate Spanish colonial architecture buildings built to withstand the earthquakes that are known to inflict Santiago. We stopped for a coffee at a stand up coffee shop with an ornate marble counter surrounding the Expresso machines and had empanadas at Pablo's favorite empanada shop. There were 8 of us on the tour with couples from Germany, Australia and an American and Scot who lived in Spain. It was fun chatting with the other couples as we walked around town. The tour went through Lasterrio where we are staying and also through Bellavista ending at the funicular which we had previously ridden on Sunday. It was a great way to see the city had we were tired out when we returned to our Air BnB.

Cheryl worked with Veronica, a Chilean physiotherapist at Grandview Long-term care for ten years. Veronica and her husband Victor happened to be visiting Santiago for a month and they came to visit us. It was interesting to learn of their perspective on both the current and past situations in Chile. They had moved to Canada in 1976. Victor told me that he had lost his government job in the early 70s when accused of being a fascist only to lose another government job in 1974 when accused of being a socialist after the coup. They had lived in Lasterrio during and after university. Although they had travelled back to Chile since leaving in 1976 they hadn't been back to this part of town so we had a bit of a tour of their old haunts learning what had and hadn't changed. We stopped for an ice cream which seems to be a Chilean passion. I didn't want to burden Victor and Victoria with my cholesterol problems so I broke down and had a small chocolate ice cream cone. Hopefully the walking will help bring my cholesterol level down.Les mer