I had booked a week in February 2015 and had decided to check just beforehand where I might reasonably get to and from on standby. On the Tuesday before my vacation, I chose Bogota, booked a hotel, and started making lists of things to do. On Thursday, though, I noted that the weather for Bogota was dreadful, and changed my destination to Santiago. I left Saturday night, so not a lot of time to prepare. Fortunately, I had enough time to take Santiago's pleasures at a relaxed pace and had only myself to report to. As the accommodation I booked was like having a sweet little condo in the middle of town, I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't actually live there. I found the city pleasant enough without being overwhelming. The outer, wealthy districts struck me as bland and ugly, but the core was lovely and had a pleasantly seedy feel to it.
Photo List (Total 506 Photos)
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Central Santiago (133 photos) - Santiago doesn't really have a historical core, not one with lots of old buildings anyways, but the area of the city first to be settled is around the Plaza da Armas, and this gallery starts there, and includes everything around the Plaza like the Cathedral, Post Office, and some nearby buildings serving the Government of Chile. It continues into art galleries and museums, including the Bellas Artes, the Precolumbian Art Museum, and the Moneda art gallery. There are a lot of photos devoted to the commercial core of the city, with its galleries (or arcades or pasages) and pedestrian streets, a while of small unlikely stores everywhere. The gallery ends with a bunch of photos of buildings or streetscapes.
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Eastern Central City (81 photos) - This area was where I started to explore the city, and the gallery starts with some interior shots of my little "hotel/condo" that I enjoyed very much, and includes some views of the city from the rooftop pool of the building. It continues into the Cerro Santa Lucia, a charming park perched atop a hill at the eastern edge of the central city (more views of the city), and from there to the Barrio Lastarria just beyond, a mildly pleasant street lined with restaurants. Some art galleries, cool 3-D graffiti.
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Markets, the Mapocho River and the Cerro San Cristobal (105 photos) - This gallery starts with a number of markets, including the Mercado Central, the less touristy Mercado de Abastos, and then informal markets extending north of the river and the surrounding neighbourhood. The Mapocho is a muddy little thing, at least in February when I visited, but its banks are mostly parkland, so fountains and trees and the like. The gallery continues into a neighbourhood called Bellavista, with low end restaurants and clubs that made me think of the the Kensington in Toronto. Then I climbed over the Cerro San Cristobal, a large hill or a little mountain in the middle of the city, with the inevitable Blessed Virgin on top. Here you get yet more views of the city, parkland.
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Outlying Areas (103 photos) - Eastern Santiago is where the wealthier citizens live, away from the slightly sordid central city. I generally found the eastern areas, including what appears to be becoming the central business district (with South America's tallest building), to be fairly unpleasant. This gallery documents several separate forays into both the east and west ends of the city. It starts at the business district, so tall modern buildings and hotels and stuff. It jumps to a randomly chosen point on the subway near the Plaza Egana, which was most unpleasant. After that, it shows a visit to a street in the east called Alonso de Cordova, an upscale neighbourhood with art galleries and modern low rise office buildings. After Alonso, I walked a long distance to the Barrio Italia, and there are photos of random buildings along the way and where I ate in the Barrio. The gallery then jumps to the western suburbs, including the Barrio Brasil, and then the Quinta Normal, a large park surrounded by museums.
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Recoleta (67 photos) - Recoleta is a relatively poor or industrial area north of the river, and I went there twice. On a cloudy Monday, I chose a subway stop at random (Einstein) and got out to explore, I was greeted with neighbourhoods of one storey residential buildings with marginal commercial streets, but something about the neighbourhood was lovely nonetheles. Some guys in a bar bought me a beer. My second trip was to go to the Cementerio General, so the photos there are gravestones and mausoleums.
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Subway shots (17 photos) - Santiago started building a subway in 1975 and they never stopped, so they have what is South America's most extensive network, to which they are adding. None of the stations were mind-blowing, but all were clean and thoughtful, nicely designed, and stocked with public art.
