A Continuacion...

After exploring Las Condes a bit (where there is another Starbucks that is two floors and has free wi-fi as well as a place called Mundo del Vino where we found some delicious wine), we went to lunch at a little bar that is supposed to be one of the five best restaurants in Chile. It is called Liguria. It was a fun experience just for the ambience.


Inside, you can see on the right how the bottles of wine on the wall reach the cieling:

Here is a better photo of the wall behind the bar. The rest of the walls were filled was culture/sports memorabilia.


The restaurant consisted of the floor you entered in on (where the bar is) and then two split levels where people ate in a more restauranty atmosphere. It was lucky we got there just before 2, because soon after we arrived the place filled and people had to wait a while for tables.

In the early evening, we went to the horse races. It was at a very elegant stadium that you can sort of see in my photos.



At night we went to Club de Jazz which is supposed to be one of the best jazz clubs in Latin America (see here.) It was a very cozy bar-club with a live band that started around 11pm. Here are a couple pics:


And finally, the only benefit of being really sick at 7 AM (no, not from the jazz club, it seems I had the flu) is that I finally got a picture of the mountains when the sun is rising:

Yes, I'm alive: here's proof

I know I have been absent from blog for a little while. Brooks and I have been wandering around Santiago, going to museums, different restaurant destinations and trying not to let the smog get us down. Anyway, here are some pictures from some recent explorations. Below, you will see me sipping on some raspberry juice (jugo de frambuesa) and next to be is the national drink of chile: a pisco sour, which we have seen just about everywhere. It seems to genuinely be what they drink regularly. It's a little sweet for my taste. This lunch was at a place called Lomit's where locals go to get a barros luco which is a stake and cheese sandwich (and overflowing steak and cheese sandwich.) Brooks enjoyed it.

Yesterday, we went to the museum below La Moneda which we saw the other day. It is a museum of Chilean Cultural History. There is a large section on Chilean film history and then couple rooms that deal with mesoamerican art, which is interesting because it is from Mexico and Central America rather than Chile. The architecture is cool. It is below ground with opaque glass which allows light to get in from the plaza above. It is very much like the Louvre and the Museum of (Modern?) Art in Washington DC, where there is a very modern, stark atrium area below ground:


From that museum we headed over to the Mercado Central, which is next to Rio Mapocho. Inside is a seafood market that smells absolutley awful. But our guidebooks say you can't miss it for lunch. So, we first did a walk through of this incredibly busy market, with people yelling at us the whole time to come sit and eat in their respective restaurants.


In the end, we settled on our guide-recommended Donde Augusto where we ordered some very slimy looking things. And what I thought was crab cakes was actually crab-slop (crab pie? crab casserole). It was interesting. What was pretty cool was the view we got from the upper floor where they seated us. You can see the bustling inside of the market below:



From the Mercado, we headed to La Piojera (piojo means "louse" or "filth"), which is a local bar that was going to be destroyed before it was saved by protesters. So this is the nondescript entry door on a little side street near the Mercado Central:

You walk through a little, wet and back-ally type entry until you come to this small courtyard, then straight for the door of the bar:

Inside (I dont know if you can see it well) is a dirty little bar that is filled with locals. We looked somewhat ridiculous there. At each table it seemed that people had each already consumed 2 or 3 forties of beer. There was a small mariachi type band walking around serenading the tables and the locals.

We ordered some "classic" drinks that were recommended. One was the chicha, a type of Chilean cider. And the next: a terremoto. Terremoto is the word for earthquake. This drink (that I am sipping below) consists of some really, really low-grade wine (think grapes sitting in Grandpa's cellar for like 15 years and became wine on their own) and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was...intense. You couldn't drink it very fast.


We walked back from that part of the city to the Museo de Arte Precolombiano, which was basically more of what we had seen below La Moneda, except a more broad look at all the different groups of indigenous across Latin America. Before getting to the museum, we walked by the tribunales de justicia (courthouse). Look carefully: is it ironic that their justice building is seriously cracking?

And finally, the Museum of Pre-Colombian Art. They didn't allow photos inside, but here is a picture of me in the courtyard:


Today, we went to Las Condes, a more northern/western part of the city. We had lunch in a local pub and this afternoon we are going to some horseraces and then to a jazz club. Tomorrow we will probably go to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar and hopefully stay in a hotel next to the ocean which should yield some nice pictures since the sun is actually/finally out. And I finally wrote.

y Aquí Estamos

Brooks rapped on my apartment door at 9:00 this morning (his plane got in at 7:30.) I let him in even though I was sleeping. We went to get coffee and lunch at The Coffee Factory...so Chilean. Then we went exploring about. Here is a picture inside of La Moneda, the "nerve-center" (the guide book) of the Chilean government. Brooks found the only thing in Chile that is taller than he is:In the plaza in front of La Moneda there is a small park that is surrounded by statues. This is the statue of Salvador Allende (see my entry on "Framing the problem...") who was overthrown by the US-assisted military coup in 1973 which installed General Pinochet. One of the quotes reads "Tengo fe in Chile y su destino"(I have faith in Chile and her destiny) which was supposedly from the day he died (September 11, 1973, the day La Moneda was invaded by the military.)


We tried to follow a little guide book walk. This is the main building of Universidad de Chile. We went inside and checked out the courtyards. Also, I picked up a couple books for my project at the University bookstore. One was a book recommended to me by a number of professors which is written by a woman, Patricia Politzer, who is the wife of one of the men who was in the Visiting Scholars program that I help organize at the Center. The other book I got is titled Abriendo las grandes Alamedas: el piquete de Londres y el arresto de Pinochet en el Reino Unido which basically means "Opening the flood gates" and is about Pinochet's arrest in London and the consequences. Very interesting.


Inside the courtyard, Brooks noticed that the odd neon numbers up around the courtyard (really not aesthetically pleasing) are actually the Fibonacci sequence. Maybe this is the math department?


After wandering through some streets, including "Little Europe" which was very cute and we should've taken pictures and we promise we will if we go back to that part of the city, we got to Plaza de Armas (mislabeled earlier) which is a very happening center. I saw tons of very beautiful landscapes pictures...Mom,Dad: tell me if you want art-my favorite was the oil on canvas landscapes. It reminds me of the plaza right next to Mont-martre in Paris, if I'm remembering correctly:


Off of Plaza de Armas there is a church simply called "Catedral." It is a very equisitely beautiful cathedral inside. I would've taken better pictures if Brooks weren't such a nice southern boy and got uncomfortable when I took out the camera while other people were all worshiping and being holy.


So what I can offer is a picture that is taken without flash and has a very long exposure to try to take in the light, which makes it a little blury. But maybe you get a sense of the beauty inside:


And this is center of the Plaza de Armas which is a nice little fountain:


And finally we got on the subway and headed back to the apartment where we are watching the [something to do with baseball]....oh, okay, the Home Run Derby. Festival de Cuadrangulares?


Look how much I am enjoying beisbol. That's all for now. I have an interview tomorrow morning at 10 AM so there should be exciting updates tomorrow. Or later tonight if I am studious.

Sunshine & a Bonanza for Mom

There must be a lot of Italian blood in Santiago. The Italians just won the Copa del Mundo and the city here is alive with people honking. And, with all the mayhem, we even got the attention of Mr. Golden Sun who decided to shine down on Chile for a few minutes. I, having nothing better to do on Sunday in Santiago when nothing (and I mean nada) is open, snapped some pictures for anyone who gets bored reading text and just scrolls for bright flashy images (but for the future: remember that for every thousand words of mine, you should be able to create a beautiful flashy image of your own).

So, what I had originally wanted to show Mom was how much more snow my mountains (yes I own them as determined by the amount of times I have stolen their souls with flashbulbs) got yesterday during the another routine Santiago smoggling:


But that is dull compared to when the sun lit up the bottom hills of the mountain (tilt the screen a bit (and click to enlarge) to see the contrast):


I like this bunch of photos because you can see the stream of sun movoing up the side of the mountain as the clouds moved:


This one is pretty cool because you can see the snow under the sun. I doubt too much melted though. Maybe you can tell that I was playing with some of the color features to get better photos.


And then what it looks like to me most days (black, white and kind of dreary):


And finally, this is looking out the window on the other side of my apartment building. There is a hill that is sort of a central park in Santiago (more of a side-park) and there is a zoo in there (hopefully I'll visit soon). Anyway, there are some nice colors here:

Ex Prisioneros Políticos de Chile (Part II)

Okay, here's the good stuff that you are all waiting for: pictures. The man, Daniel L., who works for the Camara de Diputados (this is the Chilean equivalent of the US House of Representatives) and more specifically for Diputado Alejandro Sule Fernandez (Dad: on the left menu on the "Camara" page click on "Diputados" then "Lista Completa" and scroll to his name "Sule"), with whom I have an interview tomorrow morning.

Here is a photo of Diputado Sule speaking to the group. To his left is Tucapel Jimenez, the head of the Committee on Human Rights in the government. To his right are the directors of the group. The woman, Nelly, is the one who invited me to her house in Osorno (look it up on a map):


And then, here's a photo you will enjoy because you can see me listening attentive in a corner. I blend in nicely with the rest of them, don't you think? The woman to the right of me in the photo would not stop yelling out during the presentations, but she was quite sweet and explained to me who all the different people are. The man with the patterned fleece (in the middle with the red shirt) gave me his business card in case I wanted to talk to anyone about derechos humanos. He lives in Tome, which is near Concepcion. Here is a map of Chile since I keep referencing different places in Chile.


And another photo. You can see what I mean about the men who look like they could be playing checkers in Havana. It was very interesting to see the stamina that these older men and women had to sit through a meeting that went on for about 4 hours.


And here's a final picture of another Diputado, Tucapel Jimenez, who is in charge of the committee on Human Rights in the Camara. He is a son of a man, Tucapel Jimenez Alfaro, who was a radical leader in Chile during the dicatorship. His father was asasinated in 1981. I will find out more about this because I didn't know anything about this man before he came in the room.


So those are the pictures. I will follow-up with more boring things, like the interviews I get and the different roles the group has had fighting for human rights.

In other news, the snow is even more intense on my mountains, I took some pictures which I will soon post for you (Mom.) I will have more to say today, since Sunday is completely dead in Santiago. No one is anywhere and barely anything is open.

P.S. I'm watching the World Cup on Spanish (obviously) TV and when Italy scored I was making some lunch. Maybe they yell "GOOOOOOOOOAAAALLLL" to get people out of the kitchen, since futbol is almost always on. It worked.