Last night in Valparaiso!

Justin is a bit big for his bed

Today was a great day.  We got moved into the "family room" at the hostel last night and that meant Sam and I slept in a queen-sized bed while Justin and Liz shared a bunk bed.  It was really fun to have the whole room to ourselves, and because Justin has a pad lock we were able to lock all of our stuff in the room after breakfast.  

Today we went for a walk down near the port and enjoyed some real local parts of the city.  We climbed back into the hills (Valparaiso is the city of seven hills according to what Sue read in the Lonely Planet) to check out some silver shops.  She bought some beautiful lapis lazuli jewelry- a bracelet and matching earrings.  They are lovely!  We also went into a leather shop, which was really neat.  The guy who owned the shop had all kinds of beautiful purses and wallets.  

After shopping, we had lunch reservations thanks to our friend, the owner of our gelato place.  She recommended Pablo Neruda's house to us yesterday, and when we came in last night she insisted on making us a reservation at the place with the best views in all of Valparaiso- Cafe Turri.  It was some amazing scenery during lunch!  (I will post photos when we get back and link them into these posts as they fit.)  Sam had fried eel, which I did try this time!  I am pleased to report it's just like white fish and nothing like calamari which I expected it to be like.  I had the duck confit which was lovely and had a great sauce!  I probably liked the fried duck at Bebek Bengil in Ubud, Bali better overall, but man the orange sauce at Cafe Turri was out of this world!  Sue and Liz had a really amazing seafood lassagna which had the black ink from the squid cooked into the layers.  It looked like spinach a bit, and didn't really affect the flavor at all.  Kind of neat really.  

After lunch, Liz couldn't catch a bus back to Santiago so we all piled into the rental car and drove out to Vina del Mar which is about 30 minutes South from Valparaiso.  After the boys passed out in the backseat with their heads on my shoulders (adorable picture will be posted ASAP), we got just a bit lost.  We were on our way to the National Botanical Gardens, and pulled over to check the map right across the street from the Easter Island Museum.  What luck!  We tried to take a group photo in front of the statue head they had on display outside, but the woman helping us turned off the camera instead of taking a picture so we had to redo it with just Sue, Rich, Sam and I- Justin and Liz were off and away checking to see if the museum was open or not.  Across the street, there was a very expensive and very nice jewelry store that Sue had read about.  It was REALLY nice, but more than a little out of my price range.  :-)

We got back on the road, headed for the Botanical Gardens.  Rich somehow took directions from one of us backseat drivers which took him onto a toll road.  We had to pay our fee, get off the road, get back on going the other direction, and pay a toll to get back to Vina del Mar.  Oops!  The Botanical Gardens weren't too hard to find after that... and they had 600 different varieties of plants on the grounds.  It was really, really lovely.  Surprisingly, we walked through most of the gardens in about an hour and a half and the photos are really nice- again, I will post them when I'm home and can download them to the computer.  :-)  

Tonight, we have been hanging out in Sue & Rich's hotel room while Liz works on the homework she was supposed to do in Santiago.  Sam and Justin have been playing INSANE scrabble games and Sue and I are kibbutzing (hebrew for "offering unsolicited and arguably helpful advice").  The boys had gone to the market and picked up a liter of beer, a bottle of wine, and a bar of chocolate.  Quite the evening!  I think Rich and Justin polished off the beer; Sam and I definitely made short notice of the wine.