My Trip to Chile: Day 1

After a long flight through JetBlue Airlines, we finally arrived in Santiago, Chile (Where we'll be residing for the trip).
After leaving the airport, we chose to make a three-day reservation at the Santiago Marriott Hotel, a five-star hotel located in the city.

We were assigned room 311, and proceeded to follow our bellhop to the room.
When we arrived, my father had tipped the bellhop and we entered our room.
We had the most gorgeous view of the ocean, along with the cityscape and the mountains.
We had two rooms, with two beds each. My brother and I stayed in one room, while my sister and my parents stayed in the other.
Afterwards, my father had called a car rental business so we can rent a car for the three-day trip.

My family and I chose to spend this day in Chile by visiting two of the more famous cities of the country: Valparaíso and Viña Del Mar.
We chose to head to Valparaíso first as that was slightly closer(about an hour drive)(11:00A.M.).
We arrived at Valparaíso and our first stop was at a naval museum called, "Museo Maritimo Nacional," which housed
many artifacts of the War of the Pacific(1879-1883), as well as artist depictions of the war itself hung on the walls of the museum.
We spent around an hour there(12:00P.M.), and we left the museum to eat at a restaurant nearby called, "Apice." They mainly serve seafood, and the menu rotation occurs every day so it's always different.
I ordered fried shrimp with a clam chowder soup, which was absolutely delicious.
After lunch, we decided to visit other museums, including Palacio Baburizza, Museo de Historia Natural de Valparaiso, and Galeria de Arte Bahia Utopica.
Along with the museums, we also walked around the city to recognize it a little bit. This personal tour took about four hours(4:00P.M.), and at that point we were hungry again.
We chose to eat at the same restaurant.

After the restaurant, we decided to head for Viña Del Mar, which is basically Miami in Chile.
It took us about twenty minutes to drive there(4:20P.M.), and we decided to walk along the pier that faces a gorgeous view of the ocean -- along with the beach.
We strolled along for another thirty minutes(4:50P.M.), and we decided to drive to probably one of Chile's top malls, Mall Marina Arauco.
We also walked through the mall itself and purchased ice cream from an Italian ice cream parlor called "Zenzero." Very nice stroll, but at this time, the mall can be very hectic.
It was already 6:00P.M., so we decided to head back to Santiago. We arrived at around 7:50P.M due to high traffic, but we finally arrived back at our hotel.

Once we arrived at the hotel, we decided to take a night tour of Santiago, Chile's capital and largest city.
We didn't do much in terms of walking as museums were closed at this time(yes, we wanted to visit more), so we went to visit a couple of parks instead.
We merely took strolls through them, and the first being was Parque Araucano. The more famous park of the city, a lot of people tend to visit so it wasn't a quiet stroll.
We then went to Parque Bicentenario, which is also a well-known park in the city.
This one was less crowded, so we enjoy strolling through here. We went back to the hotel at around 9:00P.M., and we were beat.
We all took our showers and slept for the next day.