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View from the Santiago apartment that is home for a couple days. Below is the Catholic University, and you can also see the hill with Hidalgo Castle.
Looking the other direction from the apartment window, with the GAM on the left, and Cerro San Cristobal on the distant right.
Everything went smoothly for the first flight. D dropped me off outside the terminal. I had checked in the day before while at work, so I headed directly for security even before checking for my gate. My printer had been low on ink so my printed boarding passes were too light for the scanner to read in the security line. “I think I can get it on my phone…” I tentatively suggested. “Yes, that would be better,” said the TSA woman. “Just place your phone face down right there,” she instructed, once I had the electronic boarding pass displayed. I was through the line in 3 minutes. I pulled out my phone and looked at my United app to see if it had updated for the gate. It had, and 45 seconds later, there I was at my gate. From curbside drop off to standing at the gate in six minutes. I love PDX! And how about technology making life easier?
I had a 3-hour layover in Houston, and I took that time to find Margaret’s incoming plane from San Francisco. I sat at a bar next to her gate and had a couple glasses of wine and waited for her. I met several really nice people and had an enjoyable stop there. In no time, Ms. Margaret was entering the terminal and we had some catching up to do! We easily got the counter attendant at our gate to seat us together.
We both popped sleeping pills and both barely slept. I’m not sure I slept at all. Margaret thinks she must have slept because her tray table was cleared at one point and she didn’t remember anyone doing it.
Stairs up the hill to Hidalgo Castle.
The center of the lovely castle and park grounds.
The castle-like bit is here up at the top. Great views of Santiago from here!
Looking out over the city from the top of Castle Hidalgo hill.
We disembarked in Santiago earlier than scheduled and were through customs in a snap. We were feeling adventurous despite having no sleep, and by 10am we were outside the airport asking for the city bus. All thanks to Margaret’s sleuthing, we took the bus to the Metro, then the Metro to downtown, then we walked to the address. It cost about $2 and we got to be with the regular people.
With really very little trouble at all, considering, we were knocking on Angelo’s door. He’s our host for the Air BnB room. We are just renting a room in his apartment with his roommate. He showed us around, explained everything he could think of, then went to sleep. Both Angelo and his roommate are Emergency Room nurses and he’s on the night shift.
The place is great. We can see Hidalgo Castle and the Catholic University on one side, and the Cerro San Cristóbal on the other. M and I took showers and hit the town, sleep deprived and everything.
Streets in the capital city are full of these impressive buildings.
Correos de Chile, the old Post Office (You can see the golden head and shoulders of one of the buskers.)
Detail work inside the post office.
Glass ceiling and chandelier of post office.
Our first stop was to the supermarket right at the base of the apartment tower. We toured the whole place, noticed an entire aisle of just cooking oil, and finally spotted the empanadas and bought a few. Out on the street, we soon came upon the Catholic University of Chile. We admired the architecture from outside, and loved the courtyards inside for students. We walked through an art gallery, then went back out onto the street.
Next we walked through the first of many open-air markets and got a taste of the kinds of things we could find here. I bought a gift right away because today is a friend’s birthday, and she asked me to find her a gift today. “And it can’t say ‘Made in China’ on it,” she insisted. I found something lovely, but I won’t say in case she’s reading.
Next we hiked up the hill to the Castle Hidalgo, which we can easily see from our apartment. It is a beautiful beautiful park with a castle on top. The hill has been the center of the city for over 450 years, and is the site where the city of Santiago was founded. Construction began on the current castle-like appearance in 1982, and the hill itself is now an impressive park and garden.
The Metropolitan Cathedral
The main hall of the cathedral.
Along the west side.
The archangel St. Michael along the east side.
We found more mercados (markets) at street level again, and began wandering. Margaret spotted the Correo Central, which is a splendid old post office building that we went in and explored. Right next to it is the Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago. At street level and next to all the other large buildings, I didn’t even realize it was a cathedral from the outside. Thus I was truly blown away when I saw the inside.
From there we continued north to the Mercado Central and found many many more streetside shops and kiosks to browse, but a whole entire fish market! We wandered deep inside the fishy place because it was compelling, and found a huge room in the center, occupied by a seafood restaurant. We spent so much time asking questions and lingering there, that they finally talked us into eating a meal. We asked so many questions about the menu that the waiter Nicholas brought the owner who could speak English, to help us with questions. But mostly, everyone wanted us to eat the Centolla, or Chilean King Crab, in season right now. It was an expensive meal, but they had all earned it, and we paid our pesos without hesitation.
Inside the huge fish market and Donde Augusto, the restaurant.
Nicholas shows us our crab.
Interesting things I noted while eating. There were many many waiters, who were all very friendly and withhout customers appeared to be invested in getting people to come sit down. Passersby could not escape their attentive calls. While we sat, street vendors walked through (because, though under a roof, the fish market was still open-air) and approached the tables and tried to sell us things including a fire starter, a small electric fan, copper jewelry and photographs of ourselves. There was a black and white stray cat that wandered through on a circuit, waiting for crab scraps to fall.
Busker dances for money.
When we were full, we also found that we were tired. It was nearly 4pm and we were proud of ourselves for doing so much stuff despite our low batteries. However, it was time to head back to the apartment. We had walked a couple miles and it took several consults of the map to get us back. More people were out, and more buskers were out. Today we passed a particularly talented Stevie Ray Vaughn style electric guitarist, a man tossing discs and telling jokes to a large crowd, a person dressed as a transformer entertaining onlookers as it danced to electronic music, and a man painted all in gold who sat still as a statue in the blazing sun, but would perform a slow, tai chi- type dance for money.
We gratefully returned to the apartment and turned in early with hopes of restored energy mañana.
Women head into the water to surf. Pacific City’s Haystack Rock sits almost a mile offshore.
Confession: I live about 40 minutes’ drive from the Pacific Ocean and I hardly ever go there! That’s a crime, isn’t it? Yes, yes it is.
In 2016 I’ve been to the beach two times. I went to Astoria for my birthday in January, and later in the Spring, I went out with a group of friends. All the photos have been sitting here on my computer, patiently waiting to be posted, and now it’s time. This was a weekend in early May.
D is a serious cyclist and most of his friends are cyclists and their idea of fun is to rides their bikes a thousand miles to the beach and then party. Luckily, I was assigned car support duty. It’s a good thing because I have personally been upon a bicycle twice in the past twenty years.
Someone had rented a couple of houses across the street from each other in a cute beach community filled with houses that appear to only exist for that purpose. They were decorated as though a family lived there, with bathrooms stocked and children’s photos on the walls, and kitchen utensils available. But it was not quite lived in, and I guessed the places had been “staged” to feel like a family home. I find it interesting how I reacted to that idea, in this time of Air BnB popularity. While many people obviously love the idea of staying in someone’s home while they’re out, it’s actually an uncomfortable idea for me, and I feel the need not to touch anything, or disturb anything in their absence. I feel as though the owners have done a huge favor by letting me stay there (payment notwithstanding), and I can only repay them by not using any bathroom products and as few towels as possible. I remain uncomfortable the whole time. Whereas in a hotel! It’s purely built for transients. No one claims ownership. Every single thing in the room is MINE as long as I’m there, and I feel complete luxury. I use way too many towels, and all the shampoo, and I rearrange the furniture, click the remote control, fill up the closets and drawers with my clothes, and collect all the brochures and placards and pile them in a drawer somewhere to get them out of my way. If there’s a kitchen, I use anything I want and leave dirty dishes in the sink. Luxury.
Everyone chose a room in one of the houses and we dumped our gear and then went to play on the beach. Pacific City, Oregon is west and a little south of Portland, so still at the northern part of the state. It’s a small community that appears to survive on tourism, since that was the theme of nearly all the shops. I’m a fan of that sometimes, because it provides classy dinner options and great coffeehouses in rural communities that could never provide that without out-of-town tourists. In particular, this beach town hosts Pelican Bay Brewery, and a comfortable and friendly brew pub with burgers and fries and great craft beers on tap.
Our group climbed a sand dune at Cape Kiwanda and were treated with coastline views.
I found this sign somewhat disconcerting.
The weather was cool and and wet most of the time, but the second day the skies cleared up and we all decided to hike to a lookout point on Cape Kiwanda. The hike is literally straight up the side of a huge sand dune, so that was a bit tricky. But the views at the top were worth the long steep slog, and shoes filled with sand.
Whales are a big tourist draw, particularly during the height of migration season in December and January. In late May there were stragglers making their way from Mexico to Alaska for the warm weather. It didn’t take long before we began spotting their spouts just offshore. Gray Whales make this trip in about 3 weeks. The photos I took don’t do it justice, but it really is fun to stand on shore and see sea creatures as large as a bus exhaling a blast of water into the sky as they surface for air.
When we returned, we ate tons of food and played games together at the big family table and told stories. When the weekend was over nearly everyone rode home in a car, but one crazy person rode their bike back to the city again. That’s close to 100 miles each way. 200 miles in a weekend. Now there’s a person who is in good physical condition.
The white-and-gray speckled body of a Gray Whale is visible as she surfaces.
These whales are said to spout water and vapor up to 12 feet into the air.
There’s another one!
Haystack Rock from Cape Kiwanda
Lovely Oregon coast
