Santiago again

05/10/2007 0 Von andiline

I’ve walked around the city for a couple of hours and now I need a rest…. what I noticed this morning is that Downtown does not only have shops bordering the roads – in each block of buildings there are ‚galerias‘ with more shop. I have never seen that many shops like today…. it looks like Santiago is one BIG shopping area…. (and when I write BIG I really mean BIG). Santander banks are everywhere (Kerstin, this is for you! 😉 ) and what is nice – haven’t noticed it last time I was here: in the pedestrian zone in Downtown there is music playing.

I walked into one of the churches and was surprised to see so many praying persons there. L;ooks like employers come there during lunch break to say a prayer or two. What I noticed there too is that in other churches you can light candles. Not in that one: there you buy flowers outside and put them near the altar (might be a chilenean thing but I’ve noticed that only in this church).

Ended up in the Barrio Recoleta where I hadn’t been yet. This is one big commercial center as well. What is coming to the eye though is that some streets are specialised in certain products though. E.g. in one area there are lots of flower shops or tobacco shops etc.

I didn’t do much shopping, only bought a book about Chile and some stuff for my christmas tree.

On my way back to the hotel from Barrio Bellavista (the quarter with the nice coloured houses) I obviously took a wrong turn and when familiar buildings didn’t turn up after a while I got suspicious and found out that I was walking in the wrong direction… 🙁 made me walk one hour too much…

Now I will work on some more pics to publish them here… 🙂