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Published: February 18th 2007
Today I decided to go and visit the National History museum (not dinosauras - its not to be mistaken with our very own NATURAL history museum). This is situated in the northern half of the plaza de armas (havent quite worked out why every South American city I have been to so far has its main square called the "plaza de armas" - if antbody knows I'd love to find out why)
The museum is located in Chiles first parlemant building. I walked in payed the 50p entrance fee and started. I quickley found out that obviously its all in spanish, so I went to ask for an some form of way of having it translated into English. They duly did in the form of an mp3 player.
This worked out quite well apart from the fact that perhaps there wasnt much space on the mp3 player as the chap speaking on it kept it quite kirt and basic (he rarely talked aboutn the articles I was interested in). Also every time I looked at a particular exibition it would later transpire I should have been looking at the one on the other side of the room. Pieces that
Cool bridge
Just for you Allen!stood out were there were many paintings of Bernardo O'Higgins and the one I liked in particular was the one about his abdication. Thing I liked about it most was the faces of all the people in it were so lifelike - really well done.
The other section I liked but for obvious reasons it was quite limited was the section on Pinotchets coup d'etat. The piece that was most touching from that section was the broken glasses of Presedent Allemande who was ousted by Pinotchet. Essential what happend was he was killed as he held out in the beseiged parliment building.
The museum wasnt that large so I quickly finished in time for lunch.
Afterwards fancying a change from site seeing I decided to do a bit of shopping. Sales seemed to be on everywhere so I decided to go bargin hunting.
Went to mall in Providence. A bit small and naff but in "paris" (big department store chain in Chile) found a jumper. Since that mall wasnt great I decided to go to Las condes where Id heard there was a bigger one. Took the metro to the end of the line. Checked the
map out at the bus stop and decided to walk to this larger mall. Unfortunatly not only did I get the scale wrong (it was bloody miles away) I got completely lost. At least I got to see some interesting new office blocks going up.
It was hot hard work (this was supposed to be my day of lesure). I finally got there. It was really big and no different to the ones back home (had all the same shops) found a new T-shirt.
Got a bus back to the metro (lesson learnt) and went straight back to the hostel and cooked up dinner got talking to a couple of swiss guys who were eating pured avocado on toast (my worst nightmare although most of the taste had been hidden by a lot of lemon juice.)
Spent that evening catching up on emails ect on a really slow pc.
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james st. james
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plaza sesamo
here is what wikipedia says about the plaza de armas in latin america: "The Plaza de Armas (Plaza of Arms) is the name for the main square in many Latin American cities. While some large cities have both a Plaza de Armas and a Plaza Mayor, in most cities those are two names for the same place. Most cities constructed by the Spanish Conquistadores were designed on a standard military fashion based on a grid pattern, taken from the Roman Castrum, of which one of the blocks would be left vacant to form the Plaza de Armas. It is often surrounded by governmental buildings, churches, and other structures of cultural or political significance. The name derives from the fact that this are would be a refuge in case of an attack upon the city, from which arms would be supplied to the defenders."