Hi guys. We decided to take it easy on our first day in Santiago to get over our 22 hours of travel time to get here! We got to our hotel about 10 AM and our rooms wouldn’t be ready until 3 PM so we hung out in the lobby waiting for our friends Sue and Stuart from England who will be joining us on the trip. Kathy had met them on a previous cruise and we cruised with them last May to Norway.
They got here about 11 AM and we spent some time just catching up on each others lives since last May. We then decided to walk around the area near our hotel. Our hotel is in a great location near lots of things in the center city.
What I admired most about the area was all the amazing architecture of the older buildings. The only down side was all the graffiti on all the walls. After walking around for several hours and stopping for a snack we went back to the hotel and got checked in.
We all wanted to get showers, change and take a quick nap (or siesta as they call it here!). We then met down in the lobby and walked to a Spanish restaurant not too far from the hotel.
Poor Kathy, the only one of us that speaks a little Spanish, was our interpreter. So just ordering our food was quite the ordeal. Our waitress, who was sooooo patient with us, didn’t speak a word of English. She was even showing us pictures of different foods on her phone but when we went to order something she would come back and tell us they were out of it. But she was so sweet we even got her picture with us!
We ate outside since it was such a nice evening and stayed there almost 3 hours. We then took a leisurely stroll back thru some of the back streets and called it a night. We were all tired! On to tomorrow.
The Wandering Italian 