Day 26: Subway to the mall

February 1st!

We will be spending most of this month in Brazil, but we have another eight days in Chile: four in Santiago and then four on the coast in Valparaiso.

Our lack of concrete plans here in Santiago have kept us from shifting the two hours into this time zone. So we’ve been staying up late and then scraping ourselves out of bed at 9:00am. I felt guilty / lazy the first morning or two but now appreciate the freedom.

We exercised this morning in the building courtyard while the kids played on the jungle gym. Picked up lunch here in Lastarria, had a couple hours of school, took a swim on the roof, then took the subway to the mall for the afternoon.

The subway was clean, fast and very usable — reminded us of the DC metro. Our New Yorker kids were right at home, grabbing seats when they opened up and quickly falling asleep.

The mall was huge, clean, super modern had several food courts and an amazing kids play area called “Happyland.” Interesting how English words are used for some brand names and tag lines. This mall could have been in Suburban Chicago. Chile is known for an advanced retail culture — and many of the biggest retailers in Latin America are based in Chile. We wandered around, picked up a new swim shirt for James and Margaret grabbed some snazzy shoes from a cool brand out of Argentina.

We found a place for dinner, with kids craving pizza and both grownups craving the cocktails. The menu had life size color photos of all their drinks. We excitedly made our orders and then the waiter told us that they had just opened and didn’t yet have approvals to sell alcohol. Two gut punches please. 90 seconds later James slipped off the booth and smacked his chin on the table. Rough start to the meal.

But the pizza was decent and the kids loved the Pinkberry desert. We ubered home, put the kids to bed, did some Brazil hotel booking, Instagramming then headed to bed ourselves.