A day at the beach!

Last weekend Chase, Andrew and I all decided that we needed to get out of Santiago for the day. I have learned that I need breaks from city life and some fresh clean air every couple of weekend. But first on Friday night we met up with our friend Alex and Maria Jose for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants Tiramisu. They serve delicious pizzas and Pisco Sours. We did not leave the restaurant till around 1 or 1:30 in the morning.

Chase, Merrill, Maria Jose, Alex and Andrew

Saturday we got a little bit of a late start but stopped by Unimarc, our local grocery store, for sandwich stuff and chips before getting on the Metro. The craziest thing happened to us while on the metro for 16 stops, when we were only two stops away from the bus station the train just shut down for about 10 minutes. It was one of those situations where we did not know if we should get off our just take our chances and stay. Luckily it eventually came back on and we made it to the bus station. Once there we purchased our tickets and got on a double decker bus. This was possible the nicest bus I have ever been on and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride 1 and 1/2 ride to Vina Del Mar. From the bus station we had about a 40 minute walk to the beach but it was a beautiful day and it was cool in the shade.

Mallory I took this picture for you! This is hotel where the doorman yelled at you for going to the bathroom.

Enjoying the beach after we ate out turkey sandwiches.

Our office drew secret Santa's for Christmas and Andrew happened to draw Chase so he bought him this hat and gave it to him early. It is the state of Texas with the Chile flag on it.

After laying out on the beach for a couple of hours we headed to a Mexican restaurant we saw while walking to the beach. I can not remember what it was called but we had some good salsa and decent fajitas. It definitely made me miss my favorite mexican restaurants back home.

It was so nice to get out of Santiago even if it was only a couple of hours. On the way back was a little stressful because some how we ended up on a bus that made a bunch of stops so instead of taking 1 1/2 hours it ended up taking 2 hours and we were trying to make it to the subway before it closed at 11:00. Our bus did not pull into the bus station till 11:10 and everyone on the bus was in a bad mood because of the situation. One guy took of running down the isle of the bus then off the bus towards the metro station, everyone watched to see what would happen. When he did not return it was like a free for all, everyone trying to rush off the bus at the same time towards the metro. As we rounded the corner and got into the metro I knew we had made it, but then I remember I did not have any money on my beep card and all the windows to buy more were closed. Chase only had enough on his for himself, but luckily Andrew had a few extra pesos so was able to beep me through. It was almost disastrous, we got very lucky!