Waterway Walk

We always say, "Today, we’re not going to walk too far." Yet somehow, we end up walking about 10 kilometers anyway. We just wanted to pop into the city center to check out some shops since, unusually, they were open on a Sunday. However, that turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, as many places were closed. Instead, there was a market in all the pedestrian streets, filled with antiques, new items, clothes, food, and more. After wandering through the streets, we suddenly found ourselves almost at the foot of Cristobal. There’s a statue of the Virgin Mary perched on top of a hill, watching over the entire city. It didn’t seem too far to get to her, so we decided to walk instead of taking a taxi. A decision that meant even more kilometers on our feet! Luckily, we didn’t have to hike up the hill since we could take a cable car. For 2,300 pesos (about 25 kr), we got a ticket for the cable car and a funicular ride down the other side of the hill. A bunch of eager tourists were biking up the hill, but thank goodness that wasn’t us! In the evening, we had plans to meet a Danish girl we’d met at our hostel. We had planned to explore the city a bit, starting with dinner at a restaurant and then hitting up some bars in Bellavista, which is supposed to be a great area for nightlife. Unfortunately, it suddenly turned out that Louise, the Danish girl, had lost or had all her money stolen. She couldn’t tell if it had disappeared on the street or at the hostel, so there wasn’t much compensation to be had. We decided to head out on our own since we only have a few days in Chile and a lot to see. Louise stayed back, as losing her money put a dent in her budget and killed her party spirit. She assured us she’d be fine and didn’t need to borrow money from us. An ad mentioned a restaurant located in Bellavista, so we wanted to check it out since it would be easy to move on to nearby bars in the area. However, the ad had oversold it, as we ended up far away from Bellavista. So, back on the horse—or in this case, down into the metro to get to the right area. Finally, we found Bellavista and a great restaurant where we had delicious food and a huge pitcher of sangria filled with strawberries. There was actually so much that we ended up sharing the last bit with the table next to us!