Today I fell a little in love

For the first few days here, I hadn't been 'feeling' Santiago. I certainly didn't dislike it, it just hadn't grabbed me quite like Buenos Aires or Rio had, for example.

Today, all that changed and I fell a little in love with Santiago.

I spent the whole day exploring and checking out the recommended sights and at times, felt quite emotional.

I started the day by heading up Cerro Santa Lucia which is a hill (altitude 629m, but only 69m above the surrounding area) literally 10 minutes walk from my hostel. The weather today was absolutely perfect so I got great views of the city and nearby snow-covered mountains.

View from Cerro Santa Lucia

At the top of Santa Lucia, there is a castle and a viewing tower. Lots of lovely greenery around, including the 'Darwin Garden' and I saw quite a lot of humming birds. It was great to get an idea of the spread of the city and the diversity of the buildings compared to the amazing mountains behind (and get a view of those mountains reflected in some of the high-rise buildings).

At the bottom of Santa Lucia there is the Plaza Neptuno which I thought apt to mention. It comprises a fountain (funnily enough!) with a statue of the God himself.

After my trip up Santa Lucia, I thought I'd head up another of the city's hills - Cerro San Cristobal (altitude 880m, and approx 300m above the rest of Sanitago).

I took the metro to Baquedano and wandered through the very trendy area of Bellavista to the bottom of San Cristobal, only to find that the funicular didn't start until 2pm. Of course, I could have walked up, but I like funicular trains!

So, to fill in some time, I wandered around the streets taking a few pictures of the awesome graffiti and the most famous of Pablo Neruda's houses, La Chascona (sadly as it was Monday, I couldn't go in - most museums and galleries are closed on Mondays). I also stopped off for a bite to eat - traditional Chilean fodder: empanadas. Yum!

Amazing graffiti in Bellavista

Pablo Neruda's house

Once at the top of San Cristobal, the view quite simply took my breath away. This was really the first time I appreciated the scale of this city and for some reason, it made me quite emotional. A mixture of being overcome by the beauty of the view and excitement at the trip which lies ahead of me.

Its a big city!

I had a good walk around the hill, including to the top where there is a large white Virgin Mary statue watching over the city.

After this, I headed to the bus terminal to buy my ticket to La Serena for Wednesday and then made my way slowly back to the hostel, stopping off at the Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda which had a fab exhibition on about India - lots of wonderful Hindi god statues and paintings from the mid 1800's. There was also a Violeta Parra exhibition on, which was incredibly moving. This exhibition also had a very cool feature which I don't think I've seen in any other museum/gallery before. Certain pictures had a sensor on the floor in front of them, which would trigger a particular song, relating to that painting, to come on. It worked really nicely.

La Moneda

That about sums up my day really. But I feel I should finish on an astronomical note...

Just along the road from my hostel is this shop:

Planetario de Santiago

This evening I visited the Planetario de Santiago, which is run by the University of Santiago.

Planetario de Santiago (at night)

They have a series of different planetarium shows and the one I saw was called 'Ha nacido una Estrella.El Universo esta vivo' (in English 'A Star is Born. The Universe is alive').

The planetarium itself is a pretty huge one, possible as big as the one at Glasgow Science Centre and has a similar projection system. The show started with a full dome pre-recorded presentation (made for IYA2009 by the University of Santiago), which started with a timeline of the start of the Universe put into context with the beginning of life, and the beginning of human life.

The show then went on to talk about the life cycle of stars, and how this life cycle links into life on Earth, touching a little on how the elements are created through fusion.

The show was a good mixture of images - both astronomical and biological - and from what I could understand (which, I think, was surprisingly quite a lot!) the level of science was pretty good - not too much, but definitely not dumbed down at all.

After the full dome show (which I thought maybe went on a touch too long, but perhaps that was because I was having to concentrate on understanding the Spanish) there was a live stargazing guide. This was good, but not great - but to be fair, this criticism could have again actually been due to my language difficulties. I felt  there wasn't enough structure to the guide and it was a little difficult to follow where the guide was going to be pointing next. One good thing: he of course pointed out where the Magellanic Clouds are, so I know where to look for them. I'm very excited about seeing them for real!

The end of the show was a little random I felt, and made me feel a bit sick to be honest!! The projector was moved about a lot and they seemed to just be randomly switching between projecting the constellation images, the celestial south pole, and the ecliptic. Bit of a shame - if I were them I would have just finished with a nice relaxing session of the stars moving across the night sky as they would do over the course of an evening (this was something they didn't even go into really).

Having said all that, overall, I really enjoyed the show.

After, I had a wander round the centre and looked at the displays, of which there were quite a few nice ones:

Because it was quite late, the interactives weren't on (I presume because they were about to close) but they seemed to have a nice selection of exhibits exploring light and lenses.

Then, I got to do a hands-on activity (really for the kids, but then again, I am after all a big kid!) about the Sun. The guide gave a nice introduction to the Sun and then we made a model sun out of a polystyrene ball, crepe paper (to give the non-smooth surface appearance) and some card for the corona. Best bit was definitely getting to decorate further with glitter!

And my finished article:

The Sun, complete with corona and sunspots!

This was a really nice easy drop-in style activity which the kids seemed to love, but also got across some information about the different features on the Sun - great activity to use in the run up to the solar maximum.

And, I almost forgot...I got to take away a 3D photo of the Transit of Venus, taken from Chile this year! Fab!

Arrival in Santiago

After a long journey, with not much sleep, I have arrived in Santiago.

I left Edinburgh yesterday at 5:30pm (Edinburgh time - so 1:30pm Chilean time) and touched-down in Santiago airport at about 8:30am local.

I managed to avoid the various taxi touts offering free information and cheap fares, and got myself onto the bus to town.

Then I had to navigate my way through the metro system with my rediculously oversized backpack! But I managed, and to my pleasant surprise, the hostel I had booked into it literally across the road from the metro stop so I didn't have to walk far.

My plans for the weekend - just really to get myself familiar with Santiago, see some sights. I may go to a Planetarium show tomorrow.

I have arranged a visit to the ESO offices in Vitacura on Tuesday, to meet with ePOD people Valentina and Laura to find out more about ESO's education and PR activities in Chile. I'll also be meeting with Valeria who works for ALMA and working out the logistics of a trip up to the ALMA site early July.