Saturday, March 12, 2016 Santiago Chile

Another beautiful day, with bright sun and temperatures in the seventies. After a pleasant breakfast where I met two of my fellow cyclists, I walked about 7 and 1/2 miles this morning taking in the very pleasant areas of Vitacura (where our hotel is located) and Providencia. Both have a mixture of residences including large apartment buildings, offices, and shopping. Along the way I snapped these photos of an appealing art gallery and Latin America's tallest building at the Costanera Center (my initial destination).

I also stopped to take a picture of two window washers working high up on the side of a building. I was cautioned by a security guard not to take photos, so I took the picture several hundred feet further down the road.

At the Costanera Center is Chile's largest shopping mall. It has six floors of shops, including one whole floor of restaurants, with a mix of high end full service restaurants and the usual fast food choices. Unfortunately, it was still too early for lunch, so I resumed my walk and retraced part of yesterday's bus ride enjoying the wide open spaces.
Eventually I ended up at the Parque Arauco, the Mall that I visited on my first day here. Although not the largest, it is billed as "the most important shopping Mall in Chile, and one of the most important in Latin America." I presume that this is because of the large number of very high end shops. I enjoyed a pleasant lunch at an Italian restaurant there and then returned to the hotel.
One thing that struck me along the way was that at every car dealership, all of the new vehicles on the lot are booted to prevent theft.

I have enjoyed the trip so far, but there has been nothing particularly exciting so far. In about an hour we will be having our initial group meeting and then will adjourn to dinner together. Tomorrow we start our tour by shuttling out of Santiago and then getting fitted for our bikes and taking a short ride.