This Sunday morning, the day after a day spent skiing and drinking Pisco Sours for apres ski, it was a little more difficult to get going!! When we finally did get up and got going, we hopped on the metro and went to Santiago’s train station. The building would remind you of the train station in Paris or London. It was actually designed by Gustave Eiffel (of the Eiffel tower) and built in Paris. In 1885, it was shipped in pieces to Santiago! The trains service doesn’t compare to that of Europe, though. I believe that they only have trains running to the south of Chile, now.

Next to the train station is a newly built mall with 450 stores, cinemas and restaurants. We quickly walked through that and once outside saw an outdoor market area on the other side of the street. That had much more character than the mall! It was full of vendors selling clothes, shoes, house ware items, etc. We wandered through there and eventually made our way to the street. All along the street there were vendors selling more odds and ends….toys, socks, beach towels, just about anything you can imagine.

It was in one of these market areas, that I saw the man with decorated llama. For $4.00, the man would take your picture with the llama. I paid the money and had David take my picture with the llama, so I could post the picture on my webshots page! I was getting a little nervous as the llama was smelling around my neck as David took the picture. I had read that llamas spit at you if they don’t like you or you offend them. I was afraid that he was going to spit on me!!!

We walked east from the train station towards the center of downtown. Along the way, we saw interesting neighborhoods. An adorable little girl all dressed in a Princess costume. She let me take her picture. The fun thing with a digital camera is you can show people the picture after you take it. She was quite pleased with it and gave me a kiss! I put her picture on my webshots page under the “Santiago Odds and Ends” album.

David went into work for a little while this afternoon. I have worked on the internet. David flies to Peru this week for meetings. He leaves Tuesday and will arrive back here Friday morning at 1:00 AM. They have odd flight schedules to and from Peru! I am going to do another week of Spanish classes and then take a break from it.

So, if anything of interest happens during the week, I will log on and report it. If not…you will hear from me with some interesting adventure next weekend.

Cheers,
Sharalyn