Santiago sights

After making the most of our complimentary hotel breakfast we headed out to explore the city for the day. I won't bore you with the details as it really wasn't all that exciting but a few interesting things we noticed along the way were:

Couples love to lay on the grass in parks and canoodle. PDA is obviously very welcome amongst the Chilean culture.

There are a truck load of dogs around the place and a lot of them are well fed which suggests they aren't homeless but are just left to wander the streets as they wish. This is worth a mention for the fact that it makes cheaping out and not getting the suggested rabies shots slightly concerning. Also, it means we are noticing the absence of Otis a lot more than we were imagining.

Last of all, the Chileans must really love queso (cheese). We ordered some lunch at a place in a bohemian district and when it came out mine was what looked like a plate of fish fingers but was infact crumbed and deep fried slabs of cheese. I could only manage a couple of them and was grateful for our 2 hour round trip earlier in the day to visit the Statue of Virgin Mary. Don't get me wrong, I love queso but a whole block of cheese to myself is a little frightening. Plus, I do want to be able to go toilet! TMI sorry.

The smog makes it pretty hard to see very far but Santiago is an enormous sprawling city with over 6.5 million people.

Jimmy and one of the many dogs enjoying the view.

Jimmy looking very excited about Mary.

Yarn bombing! Just for you mum x

While the streets might be dirty, they are a lot more colorful than Auckland's greyed out ones.

One of the many palaces we wandered by.