North Trip-Last Day: La Chascona/Concepción

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My plan for the last day was to go to the zoo with Hayley, Lindsay and Jess A. I got up, showered and went to eat breakfast. We were running a little behind schedule from when we wanted to leave but that was alright. We were supposed to check out of our rooms before noon so we packed up our things and took them to Profe Triana´s room. I went up to the breakfast area to get her key from her to put them in her room. I told her we were going to the zoo and she asked if she could go. I said sure. Eric also wanted to come. We told them to hurry up and we would meet them downstairs. I went on the computers for a little bit while we waited. Evin also decided that he wanted to come, even though he´d been there previously. We finally got out of there and took taxis to the park by the zoo.
It seems that no matter where I go in Chile, I can´t escape protests. The zoo and park were closed because they were protesting something. School groups that already had reservations were allowed in but nobody else. Lucky for us the trip wasn´t completely wasted. Another one of Pablo Neruda´s houses was near by. This one is called La Chascona. We walked there and made reservations for a tour. You have to take a tour of this house, you can´t just wander around. We had some time to kill and Hayley wanted to buy a soccer jersey so we decided to walk and find one. Well we walked and walked, never did find exactly the place we were looking for. We were a little late getting back to La Chascona but not too late. I liked the Chascona a lot more than the Sebastiana house. It might have been because we had a guide telling us all about everything.
La Chascona is built to seem like your on a boat. The floors creak and the doors are small and narrow. There are lots of interesting things inside, just like the other house. There was a really neat painting. We weren´t allowed to take pictures inside La Chascona but we could take them outside. The tour lasted about an hour. Our bus was supposed to pick us up at the hotel at 2:30 so we had to get back pretty quickly. On the way back we had the taxi drop us of at Starbucks. I got a caramel drink and then we went to Subway also. I got a tuna sub. yum! We walked back to the hotel quickly and guess what? The bus wasn´t there. I ate my Subway while we waited.
Profe Triana called Catie, Hayley, and I up to the office on the second floor. The hotel people were saying we bent some door vent in our room which was absolutely a lie. We didn´t even know there was a vent on the door? Profe Triana said we didn´t have to pay for it or anything since she knew we would never do something like that and she told the hotel person that. I´m not so sure if that was the truth but I guess I´ll never know! We went back downstairs and waited and waited. It turns out the bus was never going to come. They thought our flight was later and were going to pick us up at 6 or something. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 4:30. Profe quickly called some taxis for us. We jumped in a raced to the airport but it was really really late. I think we got to the airport around 4. There was a long line for check-in. We asked someone what we should do. They told us there was no way we would make the flight so we should just wait and change our tickets at the counter.
When we got up to the counter we discovered that the flight had been delayed and we would make it after all. While we were waiting in line to check in, I had clipped my paper bag that had my wine glass in it from the vineyard. I was sick of carrying it... but when we checked our bags, I forgot to take it off. Oh well! We waited for probably 30 minutes for our flight to board and soon we were on our way back to Concepcion. It was raining when we arrived. We waited for our bags. There was my suitcase, paper bag still attached. It was ripped and the glass was shattered all over. I´m surprised the airline people didn´t just take it off and throw it away. Jorge picked Jessica and I up at the airport. I spent the rest of the night relaxing and unpacking.

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Photos

Photo 2
Zoo strike

Photo 3
La Chascona

Photo 5
Do you see mountains and the moon? Or PM for Pablo and his wifes name.. that started with M.

Photo 13
neat wall on the street