A Chilean Adventure - Day 4

Sorry it's taking me so long to write these posts. Refer to the title of this blog if you don't understand.

Now. Day 4. Monday.

Monday was our first day in Chile without the help of Noah! It was scary, but yet exciting, to be on our own. We had an itinerary all set up for Monday. We were going to spend most of the day looking at the museums and the Plaza de Armas.

We got up in the morning and headed over to the hostel kitchen/dining room for breakfast. Breakfast always consisted of watered down juice, some milk-tasting substance, bread with peach jam or dulce de leche, corn flakes, and EXTREMELY salty and EXTREMELY runny eggs. But I can't complain. It was food. Then we headed back to our room to get ready for our day and gather our things.

Our first step of the day was to find a place where Zach and I could exchange our money! We had gotten through the weekend on the charity loans of others, and were anxious to have our own money. We walked down the road and past the Plaza (a little more on that later) until we found a money exchange. The best one we found was 471 pesos per dollar.

I walked in, stood in line, gave the lady my stack of twenties, and she proceeded to inspect each one for rips, tears, or marks. Turns out they only accept PRISTINE bills. I was only able to exchange about $100, so we returned to a different exchange later in the week when I needed more money.

Time to find the museum! We wanted to spend a lot of time in the Museo de Arte Precolombino that day, so we got out our maps of the city and set out for it.

And couldn't. find. it.

We must have walked around the block 2 or 3 times until we noticed a boarded up entrance (seriously, it couldn't have been more invisible to us). Turns out, the museum was under construction. There was some sign about "subterranio" being open from blah blah hour to blah blah hour, but hey - we couldn't decipher it enough to be sure. We asked a few policemen, but they didn't speak English. We decided to just keep walking and observe the city.

After a while, we started to get hungry. There was a restaurant, Marco Polo, right off the plaza, so we stopped in there. The menu was easy enough to decipher, but for the LIFE OF US WE COULDN'T REMEMBER HOW TO ORDER TAP WATER (note to self, ask Noah) so we all got water in bottles. Z and I decided to split a "pizza".

I put pizza in quotes because it was really an open faced sandwich. See for yourself:

Om nom nom. Crust, cheese, tomato, ham, olives, avocado, and oregano.  Z was not a fan (it was lukewarm and wasn't really pizza), but I enjoyed it! Must have been the delicious avocado. 

After lunch, we decided to see where we had planned to go the next day (Cerro San Cristobal and the Chilean National Zoo), just to make sure we knew where we were going. On the way, we stopped at the museum Bellas Artes, as that looked like an interesting place to go see. Turns out, it was closed. Drat. So we continued on our way over to the zoo/hill.

Saw this little guy just sittin' in a box! How cute!

We walked by the zoo, and got pretty excited to see it the next day. Here are some 'wild' cats in their 'natural' habitat:

Srsly. Put boxes out, cats will sit in them.

After a brief lunch (at which we also didn't know how to say 'tap water'), we headed up the street to check out another one of Pablo Neruda's homes - it was also a museum. When we passed it, we caught the tail end of an English tour. The guy was pretty interesting (for the two minutes we caught of it), and was very friendly to the dog that we brought over with us (he was following us). The last thing he said was that we should visit the museum, but we should come back on a different day because all museums in Chile are closed on Mondays.

...Thanks for that knowledge, Noah.

Just kidding, we wouldn't have had these adventures if we knew!

The dog was sitting just below his hand, following his every movement and listening to him speak. Very cute.

After our busy day, we took the metro over to Noah's place as he would be done with school soon and we would head out for supper.

Sushi!

We ordered a big platter plus a few other rolls - and demolished it.

Seriously so good. The rolls wrapped in avocado were the best. How do they make these so delicious???

Then we took the metro back to our hostel and plopped our tired legs into bed. Another busy day tomorrow - and we wouldn't see Noah until Wednesday night as he would be visiting his host family Tuesday night.

Day 5 coming soon!