(cont.) Like most places, Thursday night in Santiago is the unofficial beginning of the weekend, and nowhere is this more evident than along the street, Pio Nono, with its outdoor cafes, hopping bars, and various nightclubs. We sat at one of the café tables for a while, taking advantage of their happy-hour and enjoying the warm, night air, and then headed to a couple of clubs where the DJ’s played a rotation of samba and reggaeton with a few 80’s songs mixed in for good measure.

The benefit of flying out Friday night was that I had one more full day to enjoy the city. Friday was a beautifully clear day -- perfect for hiking around the downtown park, Cerro Santa Lucia. The park sits on what used to be a large pile of rocks and dirt. The city had no idea what to do with the eyesore, so in 1872 they transformed it into a giant park where there’s now a huge variety of floral life, hiking trails and open space for gazing out over the city landscape. I hiked to the center of the park and up a castle-like structure sitting at the top of a bluff where I had an incredible view of the towering downtown skyscrapers and the snow-capped Andes off into the distance, forming a ring around the city.

I decided to escape the heat and head indoors to the Museo della Bella Artes for the afternoon to view their large collection of modern art and works by contemporary artists. The building’s design was based on the Petit Palais in Paris down to the Art Nouveua glass dome adorning the roof of the museum that had to be brought over piecemeal from Belgium in 1907.

After hiking around both the park and the museum I was feeling exhausted, so I wandered across the street to the Parque Forestal. With its massive palm trees providing ample shade and its closely cut grass, the park must be one of the country’s best places for a siesta. I laid down in a quiet section of grass near a couple of dogs that were asleep and I drifted away for an hour, enjoying the last bit of time I had in Chile before I had the chance to return once again.

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