Laura: We got up early, had breakfast and headed to the bus station. Unfortunately for us, we went to the wrong one so we jumped back on the tube to get to the right place. On arrival we bought our tickets, jumped on the next bus and two hours later we were in Valparaiso.
Valparaiso is considered the cultural capital of Chile and it’s easy to see why. The entire town is a Unesco World Heritage site and it’s a photographer’s paradise. The buildings are built into the hills surrounding the coastline and all the houses are painted bright colours. Due to the steepness of the roads, there are several teeny funiculars which add character to an already quaint place. There are little sets of stairs in the nooks and crannies of the streets taking you to another level of cobbled pavements– it feels like a labyrinth! The main draw here however is the amazing street graffiti art that is on every surface. Art is everywhere, people have even gone to the effort of collecting the tops from soda bottles to create murals on steps all over the place!
Our hostel was also pretty good, the only down side was the slight smell of damp. We decided to treat ourselves to a fancy lunch since this is our last stop in Chile and we have too many pesos left over (we thought bus tickets to Mendoza would be super expensive but they cost us about £14 each) so after gourmet sandwiches we had a look around the area closest to our hostel. We took lots of photos, got laughed at by school children (this happens everywhere) and headed back to cook dinner and chat to the other travellers.
The following morning we headed out to an area of streets that is classed as a museum due to the murals on the walls, they were quite nice but we thought the street art was better in other areas. I wasn’t feeling that well and didn’t feel up to walking the hills (the funiculars were all closed – this made me sad) so we headed back and relaxed for the rest of the day.