Santa Lucía

Yesterday Claudio and I made our way downtown to spend the day souvenir shopping and seeing Santa Lucía. First we went to a "Feria," which the word for a craft fair. The one we went to has tons of booths that people rent to sell Chilean-made crafts, jewelry, clothes, shoes, and much more. It was so overwhelming! I always get so overwhelmed when going to these places because of the amount of booths and trying to figure out what I want to buy when there are so many choices. At this feria, you can find many things made from copper, one of the biggest natural resources in Chile. You can also find jewelry made from Lapis Lazuli, which is only found here in Chile and Afghanistan. There are also many socks, scarves, and sweaters made from alpaca wool. We stumbled upon a booth with tons of leather handmade shoes and purses. There is so much to see and so many unique gifts to buy. Even people from the city go here to buy unique leather bags and scarves.

Here's a view of some of the booths at the feria. One of these booths were selling small ukuleles, but they were quite expensive. After spending some time walking around, it was time to find some lunch. We walked just a block down from the feria, near a metro station, and found a small "picada." These are little restaurants selling things like empanadas, pizza, sandwiches, and drinks. The thing is, you walk in, order, get your food quite quickly, and find seating outside. There usually isn't much room to eat inside since it is meant for people on the go. It really is "fast" food, but way better quality and even cheaper. I ordered a wheat empanada filled with goat cheese and tomatoes. I bought Claudio's and my lunch just for six dollars, so good and so cheap! Plus, you can almost guarantee everything is locally grown and made.

Here I am outside eating my delicious empanada and wearing my new handmade scarf from the feria! After eating, we headed across the street to Cerro Santa Lucía. This is one of the hills that overlooks the city. Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago and spent one of his first nights camping on this hill. The pollution was quite bad in the air, but it was still a great view. It would be nice to see it at night as well.

This is the fountain at the foot of the hill. It was turned off when we got there but luckily they turned it on before we left!

 Here I am at the top of the hill overlooking part of Santiago. If you look closely you can see some of the snow on the mountains behind me.

Not the best shot of the background, but there's Claudio and I, a little tired after walking up a ton of steps! After walking around a little more, we took the metro the Providencia, another area of the city we had been before. What time was it? Time to have coffee, of course! We found a little quaint coffee shop called "The Coffee Club." It's not unusual to find places named in English at all.

I ordered a "cortado," espresso and milk, with amaretto. Now that, my friends, is what an espresso drink should look like! It's beautiful!

 This is the outside of the coffee shop. It was delicious. So, that is pretty much our day. I had a great time and I can't believe I'm leaving in a little less than two weeks!