During the last few days of Bill and Terrie's trip to Chile they went on a trip with David down south to Santiago. The route to Santiago is a high quality paid highway. In total it costs about $25 at about 6 toll stations like the one above to make the 6-hour drive to the capital.
Every time we travel down the highway it is fun to see the fruit stands. Our favorite are these ones that have large bags of oranges, lemons and avocados. The bright orange, yellow and green colors make for a very aesthetically-pleasing stand. In some areas there are also flowers stands like the one below.
Once we got to Santiago Terrie started taking photos. She liked the construction on the old train station below that is now used for an exhibition hall.
Downtown is generally a busy place. However we arrived on Sunday afternoon when nobody was out and about. We spent the night in an apartment in the building below that was about 8 blocks from the historic center of town.
I can't remember what floor we were on, but it was about half way up the building and was sufficiently high to take this picure our of the window.
After we arrived we took the subway and went to an artisan village to check out a wide range of chilean arts and crafts. This will be the topic of the next post. Upon returning, however, we ran into a big surprise. When we climbed up to the street level from the Subway we ran right into a massive wall of people. It turned out that we had survaced directly underneath the "Desfile de Globos". This is the equivalent of the Macy's Day Parade back home that marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
It turned out to be a fun event. Bill and Terrie got to do some fun people watching.
We had fun at the parade. Not many people in the world can say that they have seen a three-story tall Care Bear floating down the street.
We were graced by the presence of Superman, Condorito, Dragons, and lots of fun characters from both the United States and Chile. Bill, however, was disappointed that we didn't get to see Dora the Explorer. Just the though of her big head in the form of a moster balloon made us all laugh.
After the parade we walked down to the "Plaza de Armas". There were a ton of people. Below is a picture of Bill and Terrie standing out on the street (left side of the photo) while Dave is trying to navigate through the ice cream line to buy some empanadas for dinner.
Below is a photo of the "Plaza de Armas" after the parade. Lots of people that had made the trip for the parade just hung out for a while to enjoy the eveing in the city. It was a great start to our short trip down south.
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