We had hoped to spend our last day in Santiago seeing the historical district, starting off at the Palacio de La Moneda–basically the White House of Chile. I had even gone online several months before our trip to register for a tour–though the form seemed a little complicated, asking for the numbers of the travelers. At first I thought this was asking me to basically list myself and my 4 companions and designate everyone as Traveler 1, Traveler 2, and so on. Later, I read that I was supposed to provide our passport numbers instead, but that made me a little anxious–handing out passport information to a website I wasn’t even sure was 100% legit–so I just figured we’d sort it out once we got there.
I also found this very confusing description of the supposedly fantastic changing of the guard ceremony: “they have a changing of the guard ceremony every other day at 10 a.m. during the week.” Huh? It wasn’t until that very morning that I found information saying this guard changing takes place on odd days in March. I told Russ, and he said we should go for it, even though it was already nearly 9:30 in the morning. What followed was an insane up-and-at-’em where we threw on clothes, grabbed our stuff, called an Uber, and raced across Santiago to get to La Moneda before 10 a.m.
We ditched the Uber a few blocks away and huffed the last bit on foot, hoping to slide in no later than 5 minutes into the ceremony.
But the ceremony wasn’t there. Or it else it had ended mighty quickly. Or it could’ve been on the other side of the building! We sprinted all the way around this city-block sized palace only to find…nothing. We finally came upon a guard, and I asked him where the changing of the guard takes place. He said, “A aqui!” (Here!)
Then he added, “mañana.” (Tomorrow.)
It was Wednesday, March 6…definitely an even day.
The natives grew restless. “But, hey,” I said, “we’re just here early for our tour of the palace. Let’s walk around the corner and get a snack or a hot chocolate or something.”
To find this little courtyard cafe, we walked past a row of bikes for rent. Two of the boys lost their minds, begging to rent a bike. We shut that idea down fast, which brought some tears to one tired little traveler. Luckily, a pastry and some hot chocolate calmed everyone down.
Then it was back to La Moneda for our special tour. We showed our proof of registration and made our way to the short line; as the tour was only available for a maximum of 25 people, we comprised 1/5 of the whole thing. Several armed guards came out and asked to see everyone’s registration and passports (which we, of course, had brought along with us). The guard was keeping one passport from a member of each group which again made me a little nervous…
He got to us, and we handed over all 5 passports and waited to receive our entry badges.
But instead of giving us the badges, he took our passports and walked off to confer with another guard. Then they both came back and said that our registration wasn’t right, so we couldn’t go in. Seems you really did need to input your passport number on the website. I begged and pleaded and even enlisted the help of the fully fluent woman in line ahead of me…but no dice. We were turned away.
If you thought the natives were restless after the changing of the guard debacle, then you should have seen the hostility at this turn of events. There were more than a few tense minutes where no one was speaking–except to futilely revisit the “we want to rent a bike” plea.
Eventually, Russ asked what was next on the agenda. Seeing as I was 0 and 2 for the day thus far, I don’t think many folks had a lot of confidence in my plans, but I pulled out the map and said we were heading up the road to the Metropolitan Cathedral.
We headed out across the Plaza de la Constitucion and came upon some protestors who were being interviewed on tv–for what? Lord only knows…but that didn’t stop Russ and Tucker from photo bombing them…
En route to the Cathedral, we happened upon the Paseo Bandera, a super cool urban art exhibit I’d seen featured in a random magazine but–to be honest–had forgotten about. Walking down this colorful street definitely helped raise morale.
For a pretty cool video showing the entirety of the Paseo, click here.
Keeping with the day’s theme, we arrived at the Cathedral well after an Ash Wednesday service had already begun (in one of the side chapels). We were still able to scrunch in the very back and receive the blessing at the final dismissal.
The Cathedral is located on the Plaza de Armas, the main square of Santiago. It was hot and crowded and jam packed with smokers and tourists. Morale was again fading fast. We decided to use up the last Metro trip on our Bip! card and headed out to Parque Quinta Normal and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights which is an absolute must-see though we realized afterwards that it’s something one should see at the start of a Santiago vacation, not the end.
Just…wow. This place was fascinating. We lingered around way longer than we thought we would which meant we’d missed the critically important window for lunching.
Remember back in an earlier post wherein my carefully plotted itinerary was upended by an audible to visit the Mirador first instead of the museums around Quinta Normal? I’d planned for us to head out here to the far western edge of Santiago first thing in the morning and then to work our way back into town because my painstaking research had shown there was a dearth of eating establishments out here.
Well, I was right. There is indeed a restaurant shortage out here (well, to be honest, it’s probably more correctly termed a “shortage of restaurants suitable to the tastes and hygiene requirements of 5 different individuals” problem). Russ whipped out his phone, googled restaurants, and we spent the next half hour walking down Matucana towards the middle of nowhere. We finally stopped at a hardware shop to regroup and scour the backpack for snacks and the majority elected to throw in the towel. Back to Costanera. No Museum of Natural History. No real walk through Parque Quinta Normal. No Planetarium.
Instead, we toured the fifth floor of the Costanera once again.
After lunch, we walked down the road a ways to the U.S. Embassy which was pretty much a non-event as we were not in need of the U.S. Embassy, thank goodness. Then back to the sweltering apartment to pack up, shower, and figure out dinner plans.
We took a family vote and decided to head back down to Bellavista for a last stroll and meal.
We hit up Vendetta once again, but opted to sit outside and tried our best to ignore the smokers. We called it an early night due to our flight the next morning–which required us to be at the airport by 8 a.m.
Chile was amazing, adventurous, and definitely one of the most unique places we’ve ever been. If we had it to do over again, we’d probably ditch the craziness of driving up to the Embalse el Yeso and instead would spend one more day in Santiago. We would also probably roll the Customs/border crossing dice, get the international documents for the rental car, and drive through the Paso International Los Libertadores into Argentina.
Due to its massive sprawl, Santiago is a tough city to cover–especially in just 3 whole days–and I feel like it has enough really cool nooks and crannies deserving of exploration. And while our entire spring break didn’t come to an end on Thursday morning, our Chilean section of it was going to. We were off to Lima for a few days before catching the red-eye of all red-eyes back to Atlanta on Sunday morning.
J, T, and Theo B. 