April 20, 2019
Today, we had another free walking tour that took us through Santiago’s markets and ended in the cemetery.
We have seen quite a few cemeteries in Latin America at this point, and this was definitely the largest one. You could fit 117 soccer stadiums in this cemetery and over two million people are buried there. It is actually like a park with streets inside the cemetery people drive on. There are vendors who sell things within the cemetery, it is pretty interesting. Our guide said that she had a friend that actually got taken on a first date to the cemetery!
After our tour, we rode the subway back to the hostel and rested for a little bit before heading back out. I really did take time to rest in Santiago and Brendan did a lot of school work. I feel like having our own little apartment made it easy to want to rest after so many weeks of being on the go and staying in a lot of hostels. In the evening we ventured back out to explore the Bella Vista neighborhood and shared a dinner where a local person recommended. After dinner we walked around some more and couldn’t resist getting more street food. We tried ‘Sopapillas’ which was a fried pumpkin dough and they had a variety of sauces you could put on it. The local choice of sauce was yellow mustard, but I found the other options more appealing (I can’t describe what they were as they are much different than sauces we have at home). I really liked the Sopapilla and it was only like 30 cents USD so I had them a few more times during our stay. We also tried a meat skewer that was Brendan’s favorite street food during our travels. I took a bite and was like “wow, that is bomb!”. Brendan laughed and said that was the first time he ever heard me refer to any meat being “bomb”. It was really quite good. Tomorrow is Easter and for the occasion I bought some chocolate eggs I was going to give to Brendan in the morning. However, I ended up eating them all and giving them away to random people we met who were really nice. I actually didn’t save any chocolate for Easter.
That is hysterical that cemetaries are such an attraction and a destination for special events! That’s Really Different! Really funny too about eating all the chocolate and the random nice people who helped. Too bad for B, but it’s the thought that counts, lol