Valparaiso

Trip Start Feb 25, 2007
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Trip End Aug 25, 2007


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Flag of Chile  ,
Sunday, June 22, 2008

2 hours away from Santiago and on the coast is Valparaiso. It`s a city built on the steep sided hills overlooking the ports, known for its brightly coloured buildings piled up ontop of each other. The city is covered in graffiti and murals, some of them by famous Chilean artists, so to wander around it looks really cool. We had to walk up a steep hill with all our stuff and eventually found the hostel, little alleyways lead up the hill through the streets and from near the top, views are incredible.
After talkign ot a guy at our hostel we went to visit an old prison, now open to the public to look around. It was covered in amazing graffiti and seemed to have been left exactly as it was. We walked around the tall prison walls, and had amazing views again of the city and the prison grounds, covered in brightly coloured art works.
We really liked the feel of the city, everyone was really friendly, one of the highlights was finding a second hand shop which was full of multicoloured all in one ski suits - mostly women´s. We snapped up some pretty horendous ski wear for 10 pounds each which ended up saving us a lot of money.
Valparaiso has loads of really  old funiculars leading up the hillsides, we checked out a couple and then took a bus to Vina del Mar, the nearby beachy town. Although it was a bit chilly the beach was pretty nice, and Vina del Mar is obviously quite a posh place, modern high rise buildings line the beachfront. We chilled out and watched he sunset there and messed around in the outdoor gym, exercise machines  etc set up on the beach.
 
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