It´s Ok, You´re On Vacation!

Ummm...is it wrong to rationalize eating too much with the excuse "We´re on vacation!"? Ok, well what about shopping?

Oh, everyone does that? Ok, good..

Our last night in Santiago was a Friday night...wooooo!!! We started off with such a good dinner: Chilean seabass with pesto mashed potatoes, mushroom and spinach risotto, and of course a bottle of wine...yummm. For desert we tried to be healthy and order a mango desert but they brought out the wrong one--a white and milk chocolate something that was absolutely heavenly. We knew it wasn´t ours but yes, we ate it anyway...guilt free until our waiter brought the mango to our table. Valerie tried to explain it to him in Spanish as we tried to wipe the chocolate off our faces and it came out something like this: "Umm, we ordered that, but they brought us this, and we didn´t know, but this is perfect! *giggle*" So funny.

Anyway we got a local recommendation to go across the street to this bar/restaurant called Etniko. It was super hip with good music and good drinks. We proceeded to order another bottle of wine and pretty much closed the place down...yeah, we´ve been doing that a lot. We made friends with this young couple and the people that worked there and we all went out to this other club a few blocks away. We then proceeded to close down that club as we danced to I have no idea what kind of music until 5 in the morning. Whew! It was a good way to finish off our time in Santiago...although I think there might be some incriminating pictures. Good thing I don´t remember! Ha!

So now, we are in beautiful Valparaiso, Chile right now. It is a really amazing city with huge rolling hills and windy cobblestone streets, filled with street art and cute artsy boutiques and galleries. Just the houses here are works of art...they are all candy-colored with cute flower beds and decorative graffiti.

We are staying in this area called Bellavista (yes, the same name as the area in Santiago, but more appropriate because we actually have a view here...and it is nothing short of breathtaking. Damn, we felt spoiled eating a delicious seafood lunch on top of this mountain with a scene comporable to Twin Peaks. Niiiice...

We saw Pablo Neruda´s Valparaiso house today (apparantly he has three houses in Chile, probably one for each wife...) and it is sooo cool. It has a panoramic view of the entire city and contains furniture and artwork from all over the world. A chair from France, a painting from India, a piece of driftwood from Argentina...he had such a life...

We explored another area of the city today closer to the water called Concepcion. We had lunch (yes, and a bottle of wine!) and walked around the area. There is this pathway called the "open air museum" which is just a walkway through the city where artists have decorated the walls with spraypaint, stencil art, glass, and a bunch of other crap (good crap, artsy crap ya´know). It was really beautiful coupled with the colorful houses and cobbled streets. Pictures tell all.

Ok, that is the update so far. Ooh! I forgot to mention the most important thing! I got new earrings and they´re really awesome. Yeah, I know...but I´m on vacation!!! *winkwink*

<3 from Chile!
(pics coming soon! No USB port here!)