Valpariso

After we spent a day in Santiago, we decided to leave the BIG city for the quaint bohemian SMALL city of Valpariso. After some trying problems with our hostel reservation...mainly someone had taken ours...;(

It was love at first sight...if the colorful houses, and murals weren´t enough the views of the ocean and the cozy coffee shops would do you in. We spent an entire day winding around these great neighborhoods, with hills and views around every corner. We had a great time getting lost here! ;D

We made an art form of afternoon coffee and cake...we must have hit every cafe in our neighborhood. We compared and contrasted the music they played, the art on the walls and the tastiness of their "postres"...and we discovered the joy of a "cafe cortado." ;D
There were so many of these awesome grafitti walls in the city that we became obsessed with taking pictures of all of them...I am determined to do a photo montage of them when we get back. They were all so colorful and creative, we felt they really captured the essence of the city.
on saturday we bused out to Valparaiso.. past fields of vineyards, reminding us where all that good wine was coming from! our reservation of about 2 months was fudged by the hostel so we wandered around a bit until we found another home for the weekend.. and then spent the day wandering around neighbouring town of vina del mar.. not as cute as valparaiso and a bit more yuppy but still we did see a legit Moai, the statues from Easter Island.. AND .. drum roll.. we found coffee beans.. so the plunger was christened.. such joy you can´t imagine after suffering through months of instant muck!

Sunday we did the walking tour of Valparaiso as described by the french owner of our hostel.. only 5 kilometres.. ïf you like¨.. he was a bit of a character to say the least.. we visited Pablo Neruda´s house ¨La Sabastiana¨.. and rode a number of the Ascensors that the city is famous for.. it was really nice to just roam the city and stop off for coffees along the way.. taking lots of pictures of the cool murals that we ran across..