Day 9: Tierra De Fuego

Today was our second free day on this trip! I slept in again and woke up to write my blog. I made plans with 2 Chilean students to eat lunch and shop for the day. Matt, Jess and I went to the shore with Alejandro and Pedro. We ate lunch and hung out at the mall and on the beach for the day. The mall in Vina del Mar is huge! There are 3 different malls in the same area with many different stores. It was interesting to see that in the food court they have a lot of the same restaurants as we do. They have places like McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC. We didn’t eat there though, we had empanadas at a small restaurant near by. After lunch we walked along the shore and watched the street performers. One of the coolest ones we saw was a puppeteer painting with his puppet. We had to be back at the hotel by 6 because we had dinner reservations for our whole group at the nicest restaurant called Tierra De Fuego.

The restaurant is right on the shore with the most beautiful view of the ocean. They started out with a tray of appetizers full of different seafood including shrimp, crab, scallops, octopus, and more. I tried octopus for the first time and it was surprisingly good. I had an amazing fillet for dinner and I tried the house Chardonnay. This restaurant was so nice and had amazing service. We all went back to the hotel, watched a movie, and stayed in for the night because we were exhausted. Tomorrow we have more lectures at the university!