fishmarket.... 5/18

Today was our day to take a trip to Santiago. We left really early this morning, and didn't arrive until around 10:30 in Santiago. We first went to Bolsa de Comercio. This was my company, and essentially it is the primary stock exchange of Chile. It was definitely not what I expected, because the main trading floor was closed. I'm pretty bummed about that, I was excited to see it and talk about it in my presentation. It's okay though, because we received an extremely informative presentation and got to see the building. We then did a short walking tour in the nearby area, then went for lunch at a fish market. Their marketing strategy of walking through piles of frozen dead fish to go to the restaurant is really rather horrible. The thought of ordering fish after seeing it dead so nearby was gross to me so I ordered lomo a lo pobre. The basic idea of this meal is a steak with eggs on top served on a bed of grilled onions. It was enormous when it came out, but so good that I nearly ate the entire thing. We then continued a tour of Santiago, and took the bus up a mountain that was about 150m high. (That's around 450 feet for anyone who hasn't had to use metric for the last couple weeks) It was incredibly high in the air, and you could see how truly large Santiago is. We got an ice cream, and then we got on the bus and returned to Vina. I got pizza and went to the grocery store with a few compadres. All in all it was really an interesting day.