Intercontinental Hotels Santiago

... urge to try them all!!!! However a little word of warning, if the cafe has blacked out windows and a picture of a semi naked woman on the door, I think you can guess that there´s more than coffee on the menu.<br><br>That evening we visited the Opera at the National Theatre, it was a terrific experiance, our seats were in the balcony and only cost me 15,000 pesos, 8,000 for Kate. The Opera was obviously sung in Italian but the theatre ...

... caught red handed trying to smuggle 4 oranges into Chile. This is against Law number 1,235,758,945,876 and punishable by death. Sven was arrested. Debbie, thinking it a good ploy, bursts into tears. Sven stands there, Basil Fawlty style, arguing with a large female official but, as both are shouting at the same time, it only provides an amusing spectacle for passersby. However, the silo mentality of government automatons was unmoved. The law had been broken ...

... and forgiveness. ignorant gringos! Santiago is a very dry city, with a river running through the middle of it. There are stunning large moutains around it, though you wouldn,t know it because of the smog (we saw them before descending in the plane and have not seen them since; kinda could be queenstown-like with the remarkables!). Plenty dogs running free, street peddlars and street art, performers and markets ...

The night before I left for my program Ryan and I went to the Vina Del Mar Festival de la Cancion. Its similar to any music award show, but for Latin Americans. It was very popular here and was always on the television. It also went very late into the night. The show would start around 10pm and three acts later finish around 3am or so. We saw Santana and had a great time. Although it was a bit of a shock to my ...

... for one night only - Valentine´s Day - a stranger came up to me in the hostel and gave me a heart shaped chocolate, which I saved and gave to Damo pretending that I had gone out especially to get it!!! The next day we crossed for the last time back into Argentina, to the wine producing region of Mendoza. The journey was one of the best we have had, climbing right over the Andes again. At one point we looked back down the road we had climbed up, and below us ...

... dinner, we went back to the hostel where they were giving away some free Pisco Sours which I think tastes lovely. Apparently you can get p*ssed on Pisco pretty quick and it gives you a banging hangover. We only had a few before I went back onto the brew. We sat at the poolside bar and I had 1 Litre bottles of Escudor, costing lees than a quid!! It's been a really good day again today (with the clear blue skies and 31 degrees as well). So far, we like Chile.

... in the lobby - apparently, I had missed a group meeting. I had expected to receive some documentation or a note in my room when I earlier checked in, but there was none, so I assumed nothing was planned for this evening. We all ended up going to dinner at "Como Agua Para Chocolate" (Like Water for Chocolate), a restaurant inspired by the novel of the same name. I'm glad that we didn't go here on Christmas Day, because that was the original plan ...

... the skyline in the same way as the Seattle 'space needle', or the CNN tower in Toronto, it´s really something. <br><br>As we walked around the building to find the entrance, Katie spotted how it reflected in an office building across the road, I think it makes a really cool photo.<br><br> <br><br>When we got to the ...