This Woman Was Here

We arrived in Santiago in the morning and took a taxi to our hotel, the Marriott, in a wealthy area of town. We had planned to do a walking tour of downtown, but the hotel recommended we not do it and not take the subway because so many stations were shut down due to the protests. The protests have been going on foe 50 days and center on demands for health care, better pensions, and lower costs of education. They began when the government announced plans to raise metro fares. Taxes are 18% and people feel the government is corrupt are not providing them with services. We opted to have a seafood lunch ( a bucket of mussels I couldn’t finish and hake, the most popular fish in Chile) and recover from the plane flight. I’m glad we decided against either the hop on bus or a taxi tour because much of the downtown was shut down due to the protests. It was in the 90’s and the smog made visibility poor.  After a nap and a swim, we wandered out to an upscale shopping area and had a wonderful seafood dinner at La Perla del Pacifico ( calamari, crab bake, and more wonderful hake).