Check out the hotel just before noon, I leave my backpack in the hotel, then I head out to find a place to have lunch. Just walking down the street Estados where I walk by all the time the past few days, and I always notice these street vendors selling a type of drink, not exactly sure what it is called or what it is really, but on the cart, it says "Rico Mote con Huesillos Heladito", whatever that means. It looks kind of like an ice tea but have some yellow stuffs and a piece of peach in there. It is my last day here on the South America continent, I decide to give it a try, sort of the brave act of the day. Unless it gives me a bad stomach, then it will be a stupid act! Let's see, right? :P Anyway, it tastes... very interesting, very sweet, but the yellow stuffs is something I know, but we use it in the rice dumpling which we eat around the dragon boat festival. This ought to be the first time I have that in a drink and sweet too, Very strange.
I go back to the Bellas Artes area. I saw a lot of cute little restaurants having their all-tempting menu sets, given that I only understood a few Spanish words, but it sounded tempting anyway and for an affordable price. That alone is a big reason to go back. :P I walk around the whole block, trying to pick one that looks more cozy to sit down and have wi-fi to use internet, end up I pick one at the corner of a street, sitting at the sidewalk table. The menu includes a drink (coke), a salad (which I ask olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette), a main course of salmon with some purple meshed paste thingy (I know the name in Chinese, but not in English unfortunately) and at last, there is an espresso after meal as well. I am eating, while I am chatting with a friend in Hong Kong, totally enjoying myself at that environment, relax and care free. Finish my meal and having my coffee, while I continue using my laptop, suddenly one of the waitresses comes over and spit a strings of Spanish to me. I wonder if I have been sitting too long, and if she is asking me to pay or something like that. She does not speak English, so we try to understand each other with a few body motions. Turn out she worries that someone on the streets might grab my laptop and run, she suggests me to sit inside, but I have been there for an hour and a half already, I should really just finish and get ready to go to the museum, so I ask for the bill instead.
After I pay, I start to walk to the museum of Visual Art, walk too far at first, but then come back just a block away from the restaurant, the distance on the map looks much longer than it really is. The museum is closed for lunch, the staff tells me to come back around 4pm. I have an hour to kill, so I just walk around the street by the museum, where have some street vendors having some tents selling some antiques, used books kind of stuffs. Looking at those stuffs, part of me feel amazed with all those different stuffs, they looks very interesting, but then the other part of me thinks this is the same everywhere in the world, there are always someone selling junks like that and someone would go nuts about it. Like boyfriends or girlfriends, I guess, one's junk may be someone else's treasure. About 3:30pm, decide to find another cafe to sit down and get online for a while.
Find this cafe in the side street Padre Luis de Valdivia, its setting is so my cup of tea... with vinyls, movie posters on the yellow and red walls, the table is actually a glass case where you can see through, and some foreign movie DVDs, old money, cigarette boxes...etc are nicely arranged inside. The guy is extremely friendly too. I am the only customer at first, so we talk a little bit. When I finish and pay, I give him my Chile Lonely Planet too, since there is a book shelf by the wall. It is my last day in Chile anyway, I don't need that book anymore. This seems to be the perfect place for me to get rid of it. Walk back to the Museum of Visual Art, the staff says it is still closed and I should come back at 5pm. Forget it. I try it twice already. So, I walk to another museum called Museo De La Solidaridad Salvador Allende, where is named after the former president Salvador Allende (who is the first democratically elected Marxist socialist to become president of a state). The museum is showing a lot of contemporary art works acquired during his presidency. Interestingly, the guard lady tells me no photo when I have already taken pictures of almost 90% of the museum. You are funny, lady, I thought. There is no signs though, maybe she only means the eerie room in the basement floor showing the dictator's personal effects I should not have taken any pictures.
Anyway, have McDonald's for dinner. For the past few nights, I mainly have fast foods for dinner, partly because I need to better control the leftover money, so I don't need to take out more pesos out from the bank. Get to the airport at 8:45pm, it has a long line for checking in for international flights, but I manage to get through the departure gate before 9:30pm. We start boarding around 10:50pm. I have absolutely no idea how long the flight is, but I know we will stop over at Auckland in the middle of the night before heading onto Sydney.
Photos here: Day 52
