Day 4 (5/7/13)-Santiago

Today we woke up very early again and headed off to Santiago! It was about a 2 hour bus ride from our hotel to Santiago which gave us all a good opportunity to finally get some sleep! Unfortunately my adaptor broke so I was not able to take any pictures today. Four of the students named Javier, Javier, Sebastian, and Paula met us and took us to the stock exchange. The city of Santiago reminded me a bit of New York City and was EXTREMELY crowded. There were street vendors everywhere and they had a tented area for businessmen and women to get coffee on their break. Once we found the stock exchange, we were given a presentation on Chilean stocks and the economy centered around Santiago and got to go on the trading floor where the had all of the stock prices and shares posted on a huge screen! Afterwards, we went into the cathedral in Santiago which was the largest most amazing church I have ever seen! There were incredible sculptures and paintings everywhere. Next, we went to a local museum where a local school was visiting similar to our elementary school field trips to the museums in Pittsburgh. After this we were all starving so we went to the central market and I got the Chilean Seabass which was very good. After grabbing some much needed food, we took a tour of the Presidential Palace where the President of Chile actually works even though we didn't get to see him. After touring a lot of the city, we went on to one of my favorite parts of the trip so far: Cerro San Cristobal.

It is the highest point of Santiago and we had to take an incline to get to the top. The view was incredible and we could see the entire city with the surrounding mountains in the background. After taking in the amazing sights, we decided to head back because we were all exhausted! After a very long bus ride we made it back to the Hotel America and a few of us went out to find adaptors. After going into about 5 different stores, we realized we weren't going to find one tonight so we headed back for some food at Tannia's Place where I got shrimp quesadillas. They were the most bland quesadillas I have ever eaten but at that point anything tasted muy delicioso. After getting our much awaited meal, we headed back to the hotel and stayed in the for night.