Valparaiso

Saturday 5th April

Today was look around Valparaiso day. Its quite an unusual city with a strange layout. Most of the commercial centre is along 3 roads running parallel to the coast, but not the coast road itself which is pretty run down - but then the coast itself is just a port, no beaches or anything. The rest of the town, including the hotel I am staying in, is up the hillsides running away from the port. And of course these hillsides are not uniform in height and shape, so two places can look quite close on the map, but require a long walk to get from one to another.

This is the second hotel that I've stayed in that is up a steep road from the coast, the first being in Wellington, and while this may not be as steep, it is longer, and in the end higher, than that place, and there is no car this time, so it is a bitch to walk to.

Anyway the Lonely Planet says there isn´t much more to do in Valparaiso than walk around and look at all the buildings, and they weren´t far wrong. You can also go up (and down I guess) the ascensors, which are yet more funicular railways (for never having been on one before this is now my fourth in a month). The ones in Valparaiso are pretty old, creaky and not that long. The steps they bypass are generally not that difficult to tackle, maybe only 200 or so. The first one I wnt to go on was the oldest, and it was out of service for maintenance, so I has to walk up anyway.

The item at the top of the first ascensor was a museum on the site of Chile´s first observatory. But when I got there it was closed, and there didn´t seem to be a notice why. So down I went and up a different ascensor this time to another museum. For some reason all the museums tend to be at the top of ascensors. Anyway this time this one was closed for rennovations. So I walked down into the town through a neighbourhood with a few restaurants which I might go to later that evening, and then went for lunch.

Just after lunch as I was walking along, what did I spot but a bar called Los Irlandes. Yep the Irish bar, so not being able to pass one, I had to pop in for a single cerveza. Refreshed I decided to give up on the hills for the moment and walk the length of the town instead. It was a normal Saturday afternoon I´d say, loads of people out doing shopping, and bringing the kids to the parks. I walked along until I got to the Congress building, back by the bus station where I came in.

Although the capital of Chile is Santiago, Pinochet, in one of his last acts, decided to move the parliament to Valparaiso, to a site of a former home (I´m guessing someone got rich from land purchases here). So the Congress building, which is a pretty modern building, stands here, although there is talk of moving it back to Santiago.

I walked back from here along the sea front, which isn´t very inspiring, you can´t even see the water, and then headed up the third and final ascensor to another museum. However this one turned out to be a bit of a swindle. What it really was is a load of graffiti on a load of walls (well technically they are some sort of protected murals but they aren´t even that old) . Somehow it gets called a museum. Museums in Chile haven´t really been that great, but this was the let down of the week.

I continued walking up the hill from this to get to the final museum on the tour, one of Pablo Nuruda´s houses. Again this was a let down. But it was on the same level as my hotel, so I was able to walk back without having to go down and up again. Although the road wound around so much I'm not sure if it was quicker.

That evening I went out for dinner. I had intended to go to one of the nicer restaurants in one of the residential suburbs, but instead I stayed down in the city centre and went to another diner style place. This time I had another of the Chilean specialities, the Barros Luco. All it is is a steak sandwich. It was very nice, but all 3 chilean speciality meals I have had so far have been fast food options. Its not the most diverse cuisine in the world. (Well there is Congar Eel stew, but I ain´t having that).

The best thing about the meal was that there was a local footie match on and watching the local crowds reactions was pretty funny, especially the waiters who were more interested in the footie than serving. One of the teams, called Everton, were wearing jersey´s in the same colours as Tipperary, which probably explains why I thought I saw someone in one earlier that day. But Everton didn´t win, the others did, and thats who the waiters were up for.