Having spent 4 days passing through Santiago after staying in Buenos Aires, we quickly noticed the different feel here.  Buenos Aires is commonly referred to as the "Paris of South America", mainly due to its architecture and coffee love affair. In our time here, we get the feeling that perhaps Santiago could be the "California of South America", due to its number of similarities with famous California cities.

• It's surrounding mountains are lined with numerous vineyards
• The malls are contain a number of US brands (such as ALDO, Nine West, Tony Romas, AppleBees, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc).  
• Compared to its neighboring countries, everything is much more expensive here (food, lodging, etc).
• The suburbs outside of town included long streatchs of neighborhood development.  
• It's only a few hour trip to either go skiing in the Andes or surfing at the Pacific.
• Downtown is packed with modern skyrise buildings and fancy European cars. 
• And of course a less then healthy dose of easily visible smog hovering over it all.

The grey haze is the smog

We really enjoyed our stay in Santiago.  Here is a list of some additional things that stuck out while we were here.

1. The downtown was really clean and mostly free of graffiti: beautiful parks, sidewalk, buildings.  For all the smog, the buildings didn't appear to be coated with the dirt or grime.
2. Subway was extremely modern, easy to navigate and very clean.  Its appearance looked like it could have been opened in the past year.
3. The city felt very safe.  The presence of more police was very noticeable and because they looks so professional it wasn't an alarming feeling.  Every park we passed had some sort of police on guard.

We were able to visit a few museums and churches along with some plazas and parks, and a few of the Government buildings.  I don't feel like we really had enough time here and I want to come back and see more that there is to offer.

Museo de la Moda (Museum of Fashion) The exhibit that was on display was Back to the 80's.  









Museo de Bella Artes (Fine Arts Museum)

This is how I felt while we were in Santiago.  It was much colder than I expected!

Plaza de Armas  and surrounding buildings

Plaza de Armas

Plaza de Armas

Plaza de Armas

Municipalida de Santiago

Museo Historico Nacional

Correo Central

Catedral de Santiago

Ex Congreso Nacional - In 1992 Congreso was moved to Valparaiso to decentralize the government, because Santiago is already the economic center.


Palacio de Gobierno "La Moneda"  - The Presidents office

Front of La Moneda

Back of La Moneda

Castillo Hidalgo




Parque Metropolitano - We took the funicular up to Santuario de la Inmaculada Concepción del Cerro San Cristóbal