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  Valparaiso, Chile
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Yesterday (look at that, i´m all caught up and writing about yesterday), we did a walking tour of valparaíso.  this is really a neat town.  like i said, it´s built on hills, so the houses are practically built on top of each other.  many of the buildings are over 100 years old.  but everything is painted bright colors, blues, pinks, yellows and greens.  it makes everything fun and bright and lively.  and there are murals and grafitti everywhere too, really interesting things.  and there are wires and cables everywhere too.  some of the buses are still cable buses, very cool. 

anyway, we walked around town, seeing the sights.  first off, we went to a plaza with Monumento a los Héroes de Iquique honoring the men who died in the war of the pacific.  there is also an underground "museum" with remnants of the first pier in valparaíso.  next was museo del mar Lord Cochrane, a house from 1842 which held Chile´s first observatory.  we had a great view of the city from up there.  then we went to iglesia matriz, the site of four churches since 1559.  the church was rather simple, with a beautiful wooden ceiling.  i was a little nervous here since the book says to be careful as robberies happen on that plaza, and someone we talked to at the first museum told us to be careful too.  but it was an uneventful trip.  then we took an ascensor, an elevator, up another hill to a museum, but it was closed for renovations.  bummer.  but the ascensor was cool.  they were built from 1883 to 1916.  it´s an elevator, but it goes up at an angle up a hill.  and you get a good view of things as you go up.  pretty neat concept.  from the closed museum we went over to the naval museum.  valparaíso is obviously a port town and has a large naval force here.  the naval museum was interesting.  there were old cannons and weapons and model ships.  kind of cool.  then it was back to the hostel for some dinner and to relax.  then we actually went out to a few bars.  one was bar cinzano, which has been open since 1896.  there was a keyboard player and a guitar player and a woman named carmen singing.  very old school.  and there were pictures of old ships on the walls and a mural, of course.  neat little place. 

well, that´s all.  i can´t believe i´m actually caught up.  love you all.

valpo street

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valpo	valpo2	mural 1	monument to the heroes
m. ruiz, like me	ascensor 1	ascensor 2	illegal foto of naval ships. shhh!
peek-a-boo	ascensor	bar canzoni	interesting art

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