I’m dreaming of a summertime Christmas

December 22-28

Well, we’re in Santiago, Chile for the week of Christmas. We reserved a room for seven days in a super fancy* hotel. Note: super fancy is relative after going 4 days without a shower and sandwiching that with a stay in a hostel. But seriously, this place is really nice. It’s the kind of hotel room that silently encourages you to never leave your room. So we’ve done a lot of that. A lot of sleeping, a lot of movie watching, a lot of eating and drinking wine. In short – it’s been a wonderful week.

A few things to note:

Thank you to Katie who called in our Christmas Eve reservations. This was harder than it looked. We technically had reservations for both Christmas and Christmas Eve, but both restaurants were closed and didn’t feel the need to let us know or block us from making those online reservations, so… Katie to the rescue!!

We had a late lunch/early dinner at Ox on Christmas Eve and it was incredible. The steak was amazing. The mushroom risotto was amazing. The free cotton candy that they ended dinner with was… amazing. All in all, super pleased with our meal. We spent the rest of the night facetiming with the fams and watching movies. It was not our standard Christmas by any means and we were missing family, but it was a very relaxing holiday.

On Christmas Day, we grabbed breakfast and then headed out to Christmas mass. Consistent with our holiday, we weren’t sure what the details were of Christmas morning mass, but we just headed to a close church to see what was going on. They have an 11am mass on a typical Sunday, so we just tried our luck. Sure enough, we walked in a minute or two late as they were starting their 11am mass. Perfect! No Christmas music that we recognized, but that was ok. Things got weird when there was no second reading. And then at the sign of peace everyone walked up to wish the front row peace. Then we walked up for communion and… uh oh. It’s a Christmas funeral. Definitely a casket at the altar. Language barrier. We got out of dodge fast and Michael scolded me as I took this picture on the way out:

So… after that… back to the hotel. Things were pretty quiet, so we took advantage and laid low. We sat at the pool for a few hours, had a few meals and watched a few more movies. Super relaxed Christmas, super strange Christmas.

The rest of the week has also been pretty laid back. We’ve both had a few runs, mostly in this cool park by the hotel. It has some flamingos and some beautiful flowers that remind me of my Grandma:

We also hung out at the main market for a bit. The bulk of what they’re selling is seafood.

We also spent some time at the pre Colombian art museum. It was cool, but… they highlighted a lot of artifacts from the Mayans in Mexico which surprised me. I was expecting it to be art associated with Chile and the surrounding areas. And we saw cooler stuff in Mexico City.

Also – here’s a picture of El Centro:

So that’s mostly it… we have not seen enough of what Santiago has to offer, but we have really enjoyed everything we’ve seen. The neighborhood that we’re staying in, Vitacura, is really a neat neighborhood with great restaurants and beautiful buildings and parks. Definitely a recovery week that we’re enjoying to its fullest.