Rocking it in Valpo
After basking in the slight discomfort of finding myself surrounded by intimidating Chileans in my Anglosaxon influence class, I changed gears and basked in the wonder that is sushi (and not just any sushi--Happy Hour oferta sushi, accompanied by two pisco sours [!]). Amanda, Graciela, and later Mary Ellen, and I spent a good 2 1/2 hours enjoying our platters of round goodness, as well as slowly coming to the realization that pisco sours, especially when consumed with something light like sushi, can be quite potent...as well as yummy. And I think we made a new friend out of our mullet/rat tail-sporting waiter, despite Amanda's possessiveness of the last three sips of her first pisco sour.
After dinner, and some subsequent chocolate comprar-ing, we met Emily and Jeff and found ourselves in an overflowing karaoke bar filled with some impressively talented Chilean singers. We also learned that some bars charge you for the saltine cracker/ketchup and mayonaise "salsa" combo they put on the table with your drinks. When the entertainment started to take a turn for the worse, we headed nextdoor to what Chileans apparently consider to be an Irish Pub. I find it hard to believe that any bar without Bailey's on their menu would dare to call itself an Irish Pub.
I woke up ridiculously early for a Saturday morning, and headed out to meet everyone at la Católica for our tour of Valparaíso. We started at La Sebastiana, one of poet Pablo Neruda's houses, which is fairly high up on one of the city's 45 hills that overlook the ocean. I guess I should have expected a poet's house to be eccentric, but I was quite surprised to see a stuffed pink bird, slightly smaller than a thin flamingo, suspended in an oval plastic bubble and hanging from the ceiling of the third-floor living room. It's feet were all wrinkly and contorted, but it had a lovely view of the colorful houses of Valpo cascading down below us, one on top of the other, disappearing into the fog by the sea. There were also some seriously awesome old French maps of Latin America--the kind that look like they came out of a fun house mirror because the countries are all distorted and misshapen.
When we were Neruda-ed out, we headed out on a walking tour of part of the city. Turns out, Valparaíso was not built for those of us confined to our beloved walking boots, which are sometimes lovingly referred to as Billy Bob Boots. Aside from the fact that cities built on hills tend to be quite steep, this one, which was given UNESCO World Heritage status a few years ago, is almost entirely made up of cobblestone streets. And the thing is, when your shoe doesn't let you move your ankle, but there are fairly sizable rocks to be walked on, you tend to rock forward and backward a lot. It's kind of like those figurines that are all ridged when you pull the string taught, but all flopsy when you let go, except for the fact that my knees only bend in one direction, so instead of rocking and flopping gracefully, I tend to rock a little ways, and then jerk upright, and then correct a little bit to the back before steadying myself. It was cool, though, because my slow pace gave me more time to read the grafitti and gaze at the murals that adorns practically every single wall in the city. It was truly incredible--I even saw place where someone had tagged "Denver" onto a building. After our wandering, we rode down one of the cerros on my very first funicular (Valpo has 15 still-in-use elevators that transport people up and down the hills for a small fee). Then we found ourselves in the center of Valpo, surrounded by the very large, and very official, government buildings that surround the central plaza. There was even a great big office building that was built to look like a boat! I took a picture. COPA then tried to make us eat lunch in the Ripley's department store food court, but I went with some friends to a nearby cafe where we got ginormous sandwiches of yumminess.
We finished the tour by taking a boat ride around the port and along the coastline. In addition to almost breaking the boat's engine, and completely burying the other Emily in life jackets, we got to see the tank-sized sea lions that climb up onto floating platforms several hundred meters offshore and sleep in the sun. They seemed bothered by the fact that our captain insisted on circling around them quite noisily. They returned the favor by being really smelly.
Back at home, I went with Seba and his girlfriend Carola to take my host mom to the hospital because she's had this debilitating pain for a good four days now. Seba seemed fairly unconcerned, as did Carola and my mom. I don't think I've ever really spent much time in hospital waiting rooms before--even in Mexico I was in an actual room. Turns out they're quite pleasant, complete with the Mexico/Argentina World Cup game and kitchen catalogues. And now that she's gotten her mysterious injection, my mom keeps talking about going dancing. I for one, am pretty much drowning in sleepiness... once again, middle-aged Latin women show me up.
After dinner, and some subsequent chocolate comprar-ing, we met Emily and Jeff and found ourselves in an overflowing karaoke bar filled with some impressively talented Chilean singers. We also learned that some bars charge you for the saltine cracker/ketchup and mayonaise "salsa" combo they put on the table with your drinks. When the entertainment started to take a turn for the worse, we headed nextdoor to what Chileans apparently consider to be an Irish Pub. I find it hard to believe that any bar without Bailey's on their menu would dare to call itself an Irish Pub.
I woke up ridiculously early for a Saturday morning, and headed out to meet everyone at la Católica for our tour of Valparaíso. We started at La Sebastiana, one of poet Pablo Neruda's houses, which is fairly high up on one of the city's 45 hills that overlook the ocean. I guess I should have expected a poet's house to be eccentric, but I was quite surprised to see a stuffed pink bird, slightly smaller than a thin flamingo, suspended in an oval plastic bubble and hanging from the ceiling of the third-floor living room. It's feet were all wrinkly and contorted, but it had a lovely view of the colorful houses of Valpo cascading down below us, one on top of the other, disappearing into the fog by the sea. There were also some seriously awesome old French maps of Latin America--the kind that look like they came out of a fun house mirror because the countries are all distorted and misshapen.
When we were Neruda-ed out, we headed out on a walking tour of part of the city. Turns out, Valparaíso was not built for those of us confined to our beloved walking boots, which are sometimes lovingly referred to as Billy Bob Boots. Aside from the fact that cities built on hills tend to be quite steep, this one, which was given UNESCO World Heritage status a few years ago, is almost entirely made up of cobblestone streets. And the thing is, when your shoe doesn't let you move your ankle, but there are fairly sizable rocks to be walked on, you tend to rock forward and backward a lot. It's kind of like those figurines that are all ridged when you pull the string taught, but all flopsy when you let go, except for the fact that my knees only bend in one direction, so instead of rocking and flopping gracefully, I tend to rock a little ways, and then jerk upright, and then correct a little bit to the back before steadying myself. It was cool, though, because my slow pace gave me more time to read the grafitti and gaze at the murals that adorns practically every single wall in the city. It was truly incredible--I even saw place where someone had tagged "Denver" onto a building. After our wandering, we rode down one of the cerros on my very first funicular (Valpo has 15 still-in-use elevators that transport people up and down the hills for a small fee). Then we found ourselves in the center of Valpo, surrounded by the very large, and very official, government buildings that surround the central plaza. There was even a great big office building that was built to look like a boat! I took a picture. COPA then tried to make us eat lunch in the Ripley's department store food court, but I went with some friends to a nearby cafe where we got ginormous sandwiches of yumminess.
We finished the tour by taking a boat ride around the port and along the coastline. In addition to almost breaking the boat's engine, and completely burying the other Emily in life jackets, we got to see the tank-sized sea lions that climb up onto floating platforms several hundred meters offshore and sleep in the sun. They seemed bothered by the fact that our captain insisted on circling around them quite noisily. They returned the favor by being really smelly.
Back at home, I went with Seba and his girlfriend Carola to take my host mom to the hospital because she's had this debilitating pain for a good four days now. Seba seemed fairly unconcerned, as did Carola and my mom. I don't think I've ever really spent much time in hospital waiting rooms before--even in Mexico I was in an actual room. Turns out they're quite pleasant, complete with the Mexico/Argentina World Cup game and kitchen catalogues. And now that she's gotten her mysterious injection, my mom keeps talking about going dancing. I for one, am pretty much drowning in sleepiness... once again, middle-aged Latin women show me up.
posted by Emily Schulman | 9:03 PM
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