Suprising Santiago

Everyone I've talked to while travelling has said Santiago wasn't too interesting. Honestly, I hadn't looked at what to do in the city until the night before I arrived here.  Overall, I have had a blast. 

Yesterday I was out and about for 15 hours! I had pretty much no plans other than head towards the Plaza de Armas and see what there was to do.  On my way I found 5 different art museums, a great little park called cerro San Lucia, a fish market, some cool churches, and a bunch shopping areas.  I also went to Bikrams again and worked out. For dinner I thought I'd try a place I saw on No Reservations.  This place looked amazing on TV.  It was pretty far outside of the main city center and in a pretty bad neighborhood, but the food was good.  It's called El Hoyo and I got what the waiter recommended, which was the Lengua con papas (beef tongue with potatoes). The tongue was good, but no better than what I make at home.  I also had one of the many interesting drinks of Santiago, the Terremotto. It's cheap white wine and pineapple ice cream.

Today I found some decent trails to run on (for the middle of a giant city) at Cerro San Cristobal. It has a mix of paved and dirt paths with about 1000 ft of climbing to the top. There's a big statue of the Virgin Mary and a church on the top. The views up top were good but obscured by smog.  After that I had some great sausage, bean, and pumkin stew. The rest of the day was shopping, working out and bikrams. 

I enjoyed Santiago a lot more than I thought I would.  I think 2.5 days was the perfect amount of time to spend here.  At 6 am tomorrow, I fly to the atacama desert for some epic mountain climbing and running while driving in a jeep across the atacama and Salir de Uyuni salt flats into Boliva.