Santiago Day Two

Friday morning, August 16, my friends and I grudgingly woke up from the restless night's sleep to get ready for our day. After getting ready, we decided to go see what there cafés there were along the streets of Barrio Brasil. Right across from our grubby little hostel was a delicious little bakery. Since we were all quite ravenous, we decided to make that our choice. So we walk across the street and stumble into the bakery where the smells of different breads and pasteries begin to flood our noses. After a bit of looking around the glass displays, we finally decide what we want. I ordered a "Berlin Grande con crema", which is like this huge spherical pastery filled to the rim of cream and dusted with powdered sugar. Sounds expensive right? Wrong. The pastry was very inexpensive, and absolutely rich in flavor.

After breakfast, we decided to go about our day and head do La Chascona. La Chascona is the beautiful Santiago house of Pablo Neruda, one of three houses Neruda has in Chile (the other two are in Valpo and Isla Negra). We took a tour of the house and got to see things that were in the house originally when he lived there. After the tour of the house, we left and met Michaela so we could explore more of the city. It was right around lunch time, so the eight of us (Michaela, Otisa, Ruby, Eric, Allison, Dillon, Parker) walked to Patio Bellavista. Patio Bellavista is a very gringo area of Santiago. It is this large patio shopping area with some of the most beautiful things one can buy. We stuck around there for awhile, window shopping and getting souvenir ideas, and then we went to our next stop. The next place we went to was the "Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos" The museum is about the history of Chile during the dictatorship of Pinochet, talking about the desaparecidos and the labor camps. It has four levels to the museum of different facts and exhibits. The museum was so interesting and sobering, it was so worthwhile.

We left the museum, and decided to head to the open air market that we were at yesterday to eat some more delicious, traditional Chilean/Peruvian food. We sat there for a little while, and decided to head back to our hostel and enjoy our time together.

(this is the pastry that I had, Berlin Grande con crema)