46 hours in Santiago

Matt and I like Santiago. It is beautiful, ringed with mountains, and mild and green even in the dead of winter. I would love to live here, if only to wake up to mountains every morning and eat at a different Chilean restaurant every night.

Santiago is typically used by tourists as a jumping off point to other areas of Chile. There are a few fun tourist stops in the city, but people usually only stay a few days before flying to the ski slopes, wine country, or Patagonia (none of which we are visiting on this trip).

So we planned for two days in the city, and visited six tourist spots yesterday afternoon and today. On the must-see list—Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (the Pre-Columbian Art Museum) and Iglesia, Convento y Museo de San Francisco (the Church and Museum of San Francisco). What can I say—modern art bores me, and I’m sucker for anything over 200 years old.

I put together a slide show of our photos, though only a few places allowed us to take pictures. (We broke the rules at the Museum of San Francisco, where we took a covert photo of a short door.)

Tomorrow: a five-hour flight to Isla de Pascua (Easter Island), and hopefully an afternoon hike.