Santiago de Chile – Day 1

by Cyril · 2015-09-18

After a very basic breakfast (no drinks to find, so I went for the sink) I was once again on the hunt for an ATM. What I hadn’t realized beforehand was that I had arrived just in time for the big holidays (Fiestas Patrias) celebrating the independence of Chile.
As a result the city was very empty and almost everything closed. Good for a walk. A little bit more of an effort needed to find a bank with open doors to an ATM. But those do exist. No worries there.
While on my way I found a nice park where I had a good view over the city and up into the Andes. Why everyone was asked to sign in at each of the entrances of the park is beyond me though.
Afterwards I went off to buy something to eat from a small shop which for some reason was open despite most of the other businesses being closed for the whole week.

In the afternoon I joined a “tour for tips” (more realisticly named than the “free walking tours”) which did explore the sights in downtown Santiago. There I got some information about the history of city and country. A big focus was on the military dictatorship and it’s consequences for the chilenian society. There were some places we couldn’t get into though. Why? Well you know: State holidays. (They did apologize a lot about that. )