Our first Saturday - sightseeing, swordfighting, and... Clinton?

It seems that there will hardly be a dull moment here in Santiago.  Even the most boring moments seem to be punctuated by something noteworthy!  So went our first weekend here in this massive city.  Our Saturday started off with a meeting at the Universidad Católica, where Dra. Abarca, the residency program director, introduced us to many of the residents in the program.  The meeting was full of presentations by residents about each of their proposed research projects, which ranged from estimating compliance of families with vitamin D supplementation to evaluating the quality of life of chronically ill patients.

The way forth...

After the meeting, we took the opportunity to take pictures of the Universidad Católica campus, which is AMAZING!  Imagine if UAB had whole courtyards filled with beautiful plants and fountains and surrounded by old, palace-like buildings - now that's some positive feng shui.  You can see some of the pictures from the campus - it almost makes you feel like you are nobility cavorting around an old 18th century royal court.

The pope once spoke at this exact location (where the statue is).

A garden within the walls of the campus

Since the campus is very near to the Cerro Santa Lucia, which is the hill in the city center where Santiago was founded, we decided to go check it out.  The hill offers great panoramic views of the city, and that was definitely what we were after, but we found all sorts of stuff on the way up.

Various statues on the way up the hill...

Apparently they do swordfighting on the hill...

Awesome architecture on the hill

Once on top of the hill, there were, as promised, remarkable views of a sprawling, bustling downtown:

I think that official building in the front of this photo is the National Archives

Yep, that's supposed to be a cellphone-shaped building... must have been built when cellphones had antennas.

Another thing that I noticed while on the hill was the mountain range next to the city, and forgive me because I don't have any pictures of it from the top of the hill.  If you notice the picture that faithfully adorns the right side of this blog, you'll notice the rather impressive mountains that loom high above the city.  And yes, from the ground, these mountains look pretty impressive; but even more impressive is that when you are at the top of the hill, you really get a perspective on how incredibly awesome these mountains are, because they seem like they dwarf the city below!  And since it's summer time, they aren't covered with snow, but they're still majestic nonetheless.

     So after a good hour or so at the Cerro Santa Lucia, we trekked over to the Teatro Municipal, the most prestigious theater in the city.  I had found out on Friday night that on the 15th, the Orquestra Filarmonica is playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony in this wonderful venue, so we stopped by to buy our tickets.  Unfortunately the outer facade of the theatre must have been damaged by the earthquake, so there is a lot of construction and restoration going on, and it wasn't quite picture-worthy (but wait for next saturday when we will definitely have pictures!).  But what we did find that was picture-worthy was where we ate lunch: La Picá de Clinton.  Why, you ask, might it be named La Picá de Clinton?  Hmm...

Bill wuz here.

 On our way home we stopped to take pictures of the Plaza de Armas, which was alive and bustling with activity, including some unwanted pan-handling and some street-side stand-up comedy.  But full of color and life nonetheless!

Be jealous... we have palm trees.

...I think that may be Patrick Stewart?

The Cathedral at the Plaza de Armas is one of the most spectacular buildings on the square - and provided many awesome photo-ops.

This was one of my favorite statues inside - the lighting made it very dramatic.

Kelli and I then went to relax and rest our feet from a massive day of walking.  I however decided to go up to the gymnasium which was nothing more than two rickety, dilapidated pieces of multi-purpose weightlifting machines and an elliptical machine.  I had to be somewhat creative with these machines - as they certainly were in no shape to do what they looked like they were supposed to do!

And finally, for the piece de resistance of the day, we headed to Liguria, a well-known restaurant in the Providencia section of town, which seemed quite like the gringolandia of Santiago - lots of English speakers and Spanish dictionaries at each table!  The food was good - I had chicken and veggies and Kelli had beef, but we were supremely let down when the waiter told us that the postre del día (dessert of the day) was none other than TRES LECHES cake, but then came out and told us they were out.  Talk about adding insult to injury from the previous night, which saw a perfectly good tres leches cake suffer from neglect as it sat pining for an owner at Como Agua Para Chocolate...

Stay tuned, dear readers, to hear about our awesome Sunday, which included a true lunch treat, exotic shopping, and, interesting street encounters... (ohhh, the suspense).  We are working hard to keep up with the blog as much as we can!  Keep on reading, 'cuz we're keepin' on posting.

J/k