Chile Through Fresh Eyes-Mom's visit

Last week marked the end of my "visitors season." I already had the pleasure of showing my sister and dad this wonderful country. Now it was my mom's turn!
We started our adventures in Maintencillo, the beach town where I did my help exchange for two weeks in January so my mom could meet the Chilean family that basically took me in as their own. We had a blast hanging out with them. Our first night we got in and ended up sitting around the table and chatting over 2 hours. The next day a "quick" walk on the beach with my mom ended up being a whole afternoon trek ending with her first pisco sour and empanada in Chile!

We said goodbye to the familia Monday morning and our next stop was Valparaiso. I had been there a couple of times, but I decided to put the tour guiding into someone else's hands....so we hopped on a "Tours for Tips." tour. And it was a great decision! Basically you just go to the main square and look for the guide "Wally" in the striped shirt, who leads the group on a three hour tour. In the end, you just give them the tip you think they deserve. And our guide (who was actually a gringo from Culver city) deserved an awesome tip! He took us to all parts of the city, and along the way we had free alfajores (dulce de leche cookies) and a pisco sour (her second one...starting to see a pattern).

And I finally got to see La Sebastiana, another one of the poet Pablo Neruda's houses. Two down (La Chascona and La Sebastiana), one to go (Isla Negra)! 

La Sebastiana: 5 stories!

The rest of the week was spent in Santiago. Something about showing this city to a pair of fresh eyes allows me to re-notice the day to day differences that have become common to me after nine months. A big example being the stray dogs. She could not get enough of them! Another great reason for my mom's visit was seeing parts of the city that I had been either wanting to see or had never thought to see. Let  the photos do the talking...

Wanted to see, but never got to it: Cafe Wonderful. Real coffee? Wonderful!

Never thought to see: Wine bar called BocaNariz. Each glass had a cute label.

Mom wanted pictures with every.single.dog....

Not pictured is a piano bar called Don Rodrigo. You go in and there is literally an old Chilean man playing away on the piano!
We also explored the typical spots around the city I was familiar with. Having a visitor gives me a good excuse to visit these spots, which I have to admit I've been doing less frequently the past couple of months. And it's not like L.A., where getting to certain landmarks is an afternoon's worth of traffic. Metros make everything much more accesible here!

Hiking the Cerro San Cristobal. Not part of my agenda nowadays, but always nice to climb!

Although one week flies by, it was wonderful to have my mom for at least these short period of time. Thanks for letting me play tour guide mom! Chao for now!

One more thing...these are completely unrelated to this post, but there have been interesting things going down in March...

#1: On March 1st, a law went into affect banning smoking in bars, discotecas, and casinos. Finally, I can breathe when I go out for the night and return home not smelling like an ashtray!

#2: Since the Chilean school year is March-December as opposed to September-June, a couple weeks ago was sort of like a welcome week. Apparently some form of hazing  occurs here too. I've seen "novatos" (college freshies) standing outside of metro stations in ragged, zombie like clothes and painted faces, asking for coins to buy food or beer or something along those lines... 

I didn't snap any photos, but I found an example in a popular Chilean video "42 frases típicas de Marzo" (42 typical phrases of March). 9 seconds in the student says (with a hint of irony) "Qué rico entrar a la U!" (How great to enter college!), followed by a smashing of an egg over her freshman head.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRKXaTtEASg
#3: Last Sunday marked my 9 month anniversary in Chile. How crazy that I'm 3/4 done!