A Weekend in Valpo

This was SO long ago! (The weekend of May 2nd) But it was such a great weekend I still have to write about it. I will try to remember all details, but I’m sure I will forget some things.

So we went to Valparaiso for the weekend to visit Dana and Kylie. Jenni came with me and so did Miller and another girl from our program, Courtney.  Mike meet us there, and Allen was supposed to come but he got sick so he stayed home.

We arrived on Friday night, around 10 p.m. We had to wait by the metro station for Kylie and Dana to come home from their classes, which ended around 10:45. While we were waiting, we were standing on a slightly shady street and a very drunk homeless man was trying to talk to us. We decided to move down the street, where it was busier with cars and no people. I was wearing a backpack and holding a grocery bag by its bottom in my arms with avocados and a bag of tortilla chips (guacamole for later!) A homeless woman followed us down the street and started talking to us. She was bobbing back and forth while talking and I knew something was about to happen, all of us where kind of aware of it. But before I could prepare myself she reached into my bag, grabbed the bag of tortilla chips, and ran off. All of our initial reactions was to yell and try to chase after her. Then a half second later we all realized it was just a bag of chips. A bag of chips! It probably cost me $4 and at least it was nothing else! We joked about it for the rest of the night.

We finally met Dana and Kylie and went back to their apartment. We ate the guac and had some wine and planned to go out, but realized we were all too tired. So we took some blankets and our coats and the wine out onto their balcony. It was a nice night.

On Saturday we woke up kind of late, but eventually got out of the apartment at around noon. We walked along the beach, all the way to the other end of Valpo. It was really fun. We stopped at a restaurant and ate lunch and had some drinks, before going to one of the many hills of Valparaiso. It reminds me a lot of San Francisco in that sense, because walking around the city means going up or down a hill at any given point. We went to Cerro Bellavista (which is Beautiful View Hill translated literally) and it was a spectacular view! Along the road up and around this hill is the Museo Cielo Abierto (which basically is the Open Air Museum), so all of the streets were painted with street art by extremely talented and famous artists. It was so fun to walk around and explore.

We walked along the beach on the way back too, and it started getting dark. We really wanted to watch the sunset, but a major fog started rolling in and we couldn’t see it. We kept walking and decided to stop at a place we had seen on the way there: 2 old, abandoned train cars. They are still sitting on the tracks and have been redone on the inside. Now, there are tables, chairs, and a piano. It’s open at 4 pm most days of the week and you can order coffee, tea, cookies and anyone can play the piano. The entire place is lite only by candlelight on each table. The ambiance was so cool and I loved it there. I played the one song I know by heart on the piano, and we sat and drank tea and coffee together. An hour or two after we got there, an older gentleman started playing the piano and he knew almost every famous Billy Joel song and some other great classics. We stayed until about 9 or so and then headed out to buy groceries.

We went to a supermarket and all got something to help make dinner. We went home and Miller, Kylie and I cooked. We made guac, salsa, veggies, and meat. It was a great dinner and we ate and got ready to go out.

First, we went to a Quecua bar. Quecua is a traditional Chilean dance, and it is so fun to watch and learn. We had some drinks there and random people asked us to dance. It was so fun. It was one of the best places I’ve been out to in Chile. We stayed there for a few hours, dancing, meeting people, talking with some random Chileans. It was really fun. I danced with two people studying abroad there in Valpo, who were at the bar with their host mom.

After the Quecua bar we went to the salsa bar that we went to the last time we were there, Proa. It was really fun, but after being there for about an hour, it was around 4 am and we were ready for bed.

We went home and slept for a few hours before waking up at 10 am and taking a bus back to Santiago.

It was overall one of the best weekends I’ve had in Chile so far. I’m so glad I went and it is definitely one that will stay in my memory for a long time.