Valparaiso, Mi Amor

Queridos Lectores (dearest readers)

I've been living up some cultural/touristy things in Valparaiso lately.. trying to soak up all that I can in my last two months here. I will write you a little list of all of the fun things I have done.

1. Lancha Tour of Valparaiso Bay: Kathleen and her boyfriend who was visiting from the U.S invited me to go out on a boat tour of the bay of Valparaiso. We took a "collectivo" boat, which means that is full of all different families and people. The tour was only about a half an hour long, but we went by a lot of naval boats, boats that ship out Chilean fruits and vegetables, some sea lions, and we saw some beautiful views looking back on Valparaiso. This little boy, no older than 13 gave us our tour, explaining to us a little bit about the history of Valparaiso. He was very cute and a really good worker. It was cool to be out on the bay for several reasons, one because that is where all of this area was started. Valparaiso started as nothing more than a port town, where boats would stop on there way around the southern tip of South America and come up to the other side of the Americas. Also, it was cool because a lot of the literature written about Chile takes place in that bay. So many of Pablo Neruda's famous poems are about that bay, as well as Manuel Rojas. So that was neat to be there.



2. Chorillana @ Casino Social J. Cruz: A Chorillana is one of Valparaiso's typical foods. It is a greasy plate of french fries, covered in steak meat, onions and an egg. It sounds as delicious/gross as it is. The place where we went is supposedly the very first place to invent this meal. It took as awhile to find it because it really is a hole in the wall.. impossible to find because it is down this little alley. When we walked in, it was covered with random photos and extremely awkward statues. Haha, it was an interesting place. The food was wonderfully disgusting but there was no way we could finish all of it.

3. Celebration of 21 de Mayo: The 21st of May is a huge celebration in chile, i believe it celebrates the winning of the war against peru for the top part of land that is now considered part of Chile. Anyway, it is a huge celebration of all of the military forces and the president comes to Valparaiso to give a speech. She gave her speech (bc chile's president is a woman, how cool!) But then there was basically a HUGE parade around the city, full of all types of military men and women. It was complete caos to be honest! People running from one street to the next, trying to find where the other part of the parade was. Very chilean, if you will.




4. Flamenco Show at Teatro Municipal de Valparaiso: Last night I went to a show of flamenco dancers in a really old theater in Valparaiso. The theater was filled with character and little quirks, I really loved the design. The dancers were beyond incredible! A woman who works at my study abroad program was actually one of the dancers, she was also probably the best dancer out there! The colors were incredible as were there movements. A couple of times throughout the show the had spanish guitarists and spanish singers, ooo it actually brought a tear to my eye it was so beautiful. I don't have any photos yet

So those are just a couple of things I've been up to here in this city. Lately I have kind of had the home bug, meaning i've kind of wanted to be home... I gotta snap out of it because there is so much to see and so much to do here, I need to just live it all up!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend, more updates to come :)

*Vanessa*