Santiago, Chile, South America

Today was Melissa’s last day here in Chile, so we made sure to really enjoy ourselves. We had a nice relaxed morning at the hotel. We had an amazing breakfast that included eggs and ham, a few fresh fruit juices, freshly cut fruits, all kinds of breads, and even some different pies! What a great way to start the day! We checked out of the hotel around 9:30am and headed down the mountain to meet for the free walking tour of Valparaiso. It was an excellent tour!

We had a local guide with the company Tours for Tips. It was about three hours long and took us all over Valparaiso. She told us about the history of the port city, and about the graffiti all over every wall you can see. We were a big group of 27 people, but she managed to keep us all together for the whole thing, and we met some nice travelers on the walk around the city.

The tour finished around 1pm, so we went back to the hotel, picked up our bags and then headed to La Colombina for a lovely lunch before leaving Valparaiso. I had a nice steak and Melissa had a good piece of fish, which is of course a much better option for this coastal town. If only I liked fish…

We headed over to the bus terminal after lunch and got the next bus leaving for Santiago, which was in just two minutes. About an hour and a half later, we were back in Santiago. We checked back in to the Ibis hotel and picked up our bags that we had left there yesterday. We didn’t really feel like going back out in the city, so we just walked over to a local mall and picked up a pizza to have in the room. Pizza is one of Melissa’s favorite kinds of food, which is a major bonus, because I always love pizza! We stayed at the hotel the rest of the night. We went downstairs for one more pisco sour to cheers to our visit. This ended up being one of the best pisco sours we had on the whole trip, so it was a great way to end it.

We just chilled in the room for the rest of the night, and then at midnight I had to bring Melissa downstairs to get her taxi to the airport. It was really hard to say goodbye, because these last five days have been so awesome. We’re both really hoping to see each other again soon, so hopefully we can work something out for Christmas. It was three months since we saw each other last time, and we really don’t want to wait that long again. I’m going to miss her, for sure.