On the evening after they got to Santiago Dave, Terrie and Bill decided to visit the Pueblo Artesanal (Artisan Village) downtown. Bill and Terrie (mostly Terrie) were interested in seeing a cross-section of the types of art produce in Chile.
Due to the crazyness of all of the people in Santiago it made the most sense to take the Subway. Above Terrie is putting in here ticket to enter the subway. This was her first time being on a subway.
The subway system in Santiago is very well developed. The subways come very quickly and travel fast. Since we were going the opposite direction of most people the subway we were in was quite empty.
When we surfaced we found outselves just outside the main downtown part of the city. Here the buildings were only two to three stories tall instead of five to thirty stories tall downtown. Everybody found it interesting below to still be in a major city yet to some local people driving a horse-drawn cart down the street.
This is the entrance to the old Monestary complex that is converted into the art village. Terrie was really impressed with the Jacaranda trees that were covered with large purple flowers throughout the city (below).
In the park outside the village we saw lots of parrots. They had nests up in the palm trees. In the picture below you can see entrances to three nests. From the ground you could see parrots inside of each one.
This is the entrance to the "Centro Artesanal Los Dominicos". Inside are more than 50 producers and vendors of arts and crafts.
Inside the village each artist produces and sells his craft. Below, Terrie poses in front of an art shop where she bought a really cute Chilean nativity set.
Terrie liked to pose with the artists that produced each of the things she bought. The artist below sold lots of really pretty items with pressed flowers on them.
Terrie was quite impressed with one stall where they made lots of different types of musical instruments. She had lots of questions about what they were called and how they were played. They had all types of wood and ceramic flutes as well as lots of stringed instruments.
Bill was a little less interested in musical instruments and spent time checking out the variety of plants for sale. He found a couple he really liked but didn't think he could get them through customs on the way back to the states.
Dave thought this wood mask shop was pretty cool. It had hundreds of different carved faces that you could hang on your wall or otherwise use as decorations.
During the whole trip to Chile Terrie was on the lookout for a nice sweater. She had tried on dozens and dozens of different sweaters but was never really pleased with any of them and was running out of time. Fortunately in the artesan village Terrie found one she really liked. It was made with Shetland wool to make it really soft. It was good to see Terrie find something that she was please with for a favorable price.
After the village we headed back downtown where we ran into the balloon parade (see last post) and enjoyed a nice evening in the big city.
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