chile: santiago, zapallar, valpairiso, vina del mar

After Ashley's class ended in Buenos Aires, we headed to Santiago, Chile to visit an old family friend, Mariana. She was kind enough to let Ashley and I stay with her at her beautiful apartment on the top floor of her building over-looking the city. The photos below are of her amazing balcony with the best view of the sunset.

Our first day we took a hop-on hop-off tour of Santiago while Mariana studied for her law school finals. The picture below shows the tallest building in South America, still being built.

This is the Bellavista neighborhood of Santiago. It is really nice and the area where most people go out. Our first night in Santiago, Mariana's boyfriend's son took us out in Bellavista and we saw a couple live shows and went to a reggaetone club. 

This is a statue of the virgin mary that Ashley and I later hiked to...

The sunset from Mariana's balcony

The next day Ashley and I went on a nice long hike up to the Virgin Mary in El Parque Metropolitano de Santiago

Can you find Ashley in this picture?

3 hours later!

A little ice cream reward for all our hard work. Unfortunately, it was a foggy day and the air in the city is extremely polluted so the view wasn't great, but if it had been sunny I think we would have melted from the heat.

We went out to dinner that night to celebrate Mariana finishing one of her finals. I ate really yummy gnocchi.

The next day, Mariana had to study all day, but her boyfriend Cesar was kind enough to take the day off work and be our tour guide! We drove about two hours out of the city to the beautiful beach town of Zappallar for lunch. 

YUMMM parmesan razor clams... probably one of the best things I ate the whole time.

After Zappallar, we drove a little ways to Vina del Mar and Valpairiso. These are really popular destinations for vacationing Chileans and Argentines. The beaches were super crowded but it was really nice. The beaches in Chile are definitely nicer than those in Argentina.

The flower clock in Vina del Mar!

Overall, our experience in Chile was a lovely way to end our trip. Buenos Aires was wild in so many ways. It was completely lawless, with no rules and ridiculous nightlife, but an extreme lack of infrastructure and a struggling economy. Santiago on the other hand, was incredibly clean, with little to no corruption, and a growing economy. As much as our time in Buenos Aires was crazy fun, our short time in Chile was relaxing and rejuvenating. We were so grateful to have such wonderful and generous friends in Santiago, and it was an amazing experience in a beautiful city.

We went back to Buenos Aires for one more night and then headed back to the States. One missed connection and 17 hours later, we were at LAX with my adorable Mommy and Daddy waiting with a breakfast sandwich and cookies for me! That is one thing that doesn't exist in South America... a good breakfast sandwich with soy bacon.

Now I am waiting to hear back from law schools! In the meantime I'm working at a pilates studio and picking up a lot of hobbies :)

buenos aires: ferias and art museums

On Sunday, Ashley and I decided it was time to visit some museums. The two main art museums in Buenos Aires are the MALBA and the MAMBA. 

MALBA = Museo de Arte LatinAmericano de Buenos Aires

MAMBA = Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires

Both museums are modern art... so it goes without saying that both museums were pretty weird. I really liked some of the pieces though. A lot of the temporary exhibits were really scary and murderous, but I couldn't take pictures of them, so you will have to use your imagination.

The pictures below are from the MALBA.

really... what is that?

Ashley tried to touch a lot of the art. I restrained her when i could.

I did like this bench though!

Frieda's self-portrait

After our modern art adventures, we went to the crafts fairs that go on every Sunday. One of them is the Feria de Recoleta, which is made up of tons of tents sprawled throughout the courtyard in front of the cemetery with all sorts of souvenirs from hand-made leather notebooks, to weird finger puppets, to purses and scarves. 

Then we went to the Feria de San Telmo. This fair was more for antiques, with lots of vintage silverware and old paper goods. There was a tango show going on in the middle of the square as well.

The pictures below are from the MAMBA, located in San Telmo.

buenos aires: nightlife

I thought I'd include some more pictures of the nightlife, because that is a very big part of Argentine culture. People in the States say that nothing good happens after midnight, but in Argentina, nothing good happens before midnight. The city really comes to life at the late night dinners, bars, and boliches.

Ash and I in Plaza Serrano splitting a Quilmes at a bar called Brujas.

Sitting at one of Jeff's many tables at Crobar.

Jeff and Lucas in Plaza Serrano

Jeff was craving steak (called parilla in BA) pretty much every day of the trip. The above picture captures the before and after of a trip to the super busy parilla restaurant Las Cabras. I'm not sure if he demolished the steak or if it demolished him, but we took a long post-dinner walk for him to recover.

He also insisted on wearing hawaiian shirts on Fridays because it was what he called "Aloha Fridays." The portenos (local BA residents) did not like or understand his style.

This was Club Niceto... A fun club for Thursday nights. 

Every night at some point there is a drag show! 

This was probably the best club we went to, called Terrazas del Este. It is popular on Wednesdays and Saturday nights and is located a little bit outside of the city. It is MASSIVE. There were probably eight huge rooms that all played different genres of music, and then this huge patio with its own DJ. Walking from room to room in this place was like being at 10 different clubs because every room was really it's own environment with different music, dancing, and people.

We stayed until sunrise.

And then Jeff got a hot dog on the way out... who doesn't want a hot dog at 6:30 in the morning?

La Bomba Round 2

Ryan the party animal

Luke, Ryan, and Jeff getting their Quilmes on.