Day 53 – Santiago, Chile

After disembarking the ship at 8.30 am, we were driven to Santiago, the capital of Chile, for a day exploring by ourselves. The drive took almost 2 hours which enabled us to see a fair bit of countryside on the way. We were dropped off at Plaza de la Constitucion where, outside the presidential palace, we briefly watched the changing of the guard which was rather randomly accompanied by ‘Uptown Funk’ by Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson. Not very suitable music for proceedings of such gravitas!

After giving our zealous tour guide the slip, we made our way on foot to Plaza de Armas where we went inside the cathedral and also enjoyed looking at the artworks on sale in the square. We then walked through some of the pedestrianised streets until we reached Barrio Lastarria where we nipped into the Museum of Visual Arts (very underwhelming) and then had lunch at the restaurant next door (Mulato) which was very lovely. Next we walked back along Avenida Bernard O’Higgins to the Saint Lucia craft market where we managed to splash £100!! We then marched back to our meeting point for the coach ride back to the ship at San Antonio.

We really enjoyed today. Santiago is not as chic or affluent as Buenos Aires, but the central area around Plaza de Armas has plenty of stunning architecture, there is loads to see (we didn’t even scratch the surface today) and we felt mostly perfectly safe, in spite of our guide’s dire warnings about removing all jewellery (nobody did) and never getting our phones out.