First day

Trip Start Jul 09, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Chile  ,
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Our hotel is nice. It's in an area called Las Condes which is to the north east of the city centre. It's the business area and there's lots of high rises around. It's apparently one of the more affluent areas in the city. Our hotel room is great, has a nice view of the Andes behind all the buildings. I'll take some pics before we go. We managed to check in at 7.30am which was great. I was expecting to be hanging around until noon. We spent most of the day sleeping, doing some work and watching English tv with Spanish subtitles.

In the afternoon we ventured out to the shops to get a Chilean cell phone. In the US I'd been told by many people that 'everyone speaks English in Chile, you'll have no problems'. Ahhhh not true! We gave up on the idea of trying to get a phone that night and went to the pub instead. We went to this Aussie bar called Boomerang expecting to at least find a few expats. It was only 5pm though so super early for Chileans. They don't eat until at least 9pm and then go out to bars after that. We were the only people in there apart from the 5 bar staff, none of whom spoke a lick of English. At this point I was glad that I didn't stick with the idea of just finding a job in a bar, it was becoming quite apparent that you do actually have to speak Spanish.

We headed over to another gastronomical area (yes that's the Chilean term for a place with restaurants and bars) and found a good ole Irish pub called Flannerys. Still no expats but we did manage to make friends with a kiwi guy working there called Sam. He doesn't speak Spanish.
 
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