Hi all! Today’s tour plans got ruined by a mudslide… but I swear I did not look into that Jesus statue’s eyes!! Seriously, we were booked on an all day tour thru the Andes mountains with a stop at a winery and a beautiful lake but we got notified that the tour company had to cancel due to a mudslide along the road up thru the mountains.
First, all we could think about was what if we had gotten up into the mountains and them the mudslide happened and we got stuck up there! Could we have missed our cruise?? Then we all laughed and asked each other if any one of us looked into the statue’s eyes to bring bad luck?? Lol. We all said NO!!
Since we couldn’t go on the tour we all agreed that we had walked so much over the last few days that we’d just sit and take in the city. So we did the Hop On Hop Off bus but we never hopped off!! It was one of those double decker buses and we were the first ones on so we took the front two seats on the top and let them drive us around the whole city with all the narration of the buildings and areas.
We started the tour around 10:30 AM and we weren’t off until close to 1 PM. It was really enjoyable and we got to see everything. When we got off we went to find a place for lunch. We found this great restaurant where it seemed like all the local business workers were eating so we chose it. We once again had some challenges ordering food due to the language barrier but we finally found a waiter that spoke English and were able to order. Kathy and I decided to get the “steak” but thought it would just be a thin cut of flank steak. They brought so much steak on each plate I had to take a picture of it! We couldn’t even eat half of it so we asked for a box and will give it to the sweet stray dog we met outside our hotel last night. After lunch we walked around and did a little shopping since there are street vendors EVERYWHERE in this city with really good deals! I found a couple nice hand stitched jackets for my grandkids that look like real authentic Chilean garb and Kathy found a cute top. Both were below $10! We also saw some kids in a band playing on the street for money and they were pretty good. We think they even had an oboe!
We then went back to the hotel to chill. Kathy worked on doing her bids for work and I just did some email and searched the web. We started to get organized on what we needed to board the ship for tomorrow. We then showered and rested for awhile and met Sue and Stuart at 8 PM in the lobby to go to dinner.
We all agreed we really liked the Italian restaurant last night somuch that we’d try it again. So we walked down there and were able to get our same waitress from last night. Kathy and I had eaten so much at lunch that we split a pizza but we all had room for the chocolate lava cake that was very yummy!
So we’re now ready to board the boat!! Lots more to come on the next blog entry!
PS: I don’t have many pictures from today!
The Wandering Italian 