Cultural Heritage Day

Last Sunday was El Día del Patrimonio Cultural, a national holiday when all of the museums and government buildings were open to the public and free.  The first place we went was La Moneda, which used to be the treasury building, then some of the presidents lived there, and now it's got other government offices in it.  It's almost never open to the public, so all of the Chileans showing us around were really pumped to go inside and took pictures of everything.

La Moneda

The chapel in La Moneda

After leaving there, we went to the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, which one of my roommates really enjoyed since she's an anthropology major.  It was really cool to look at, but only some of the signs had English translations, so I didn't really learn much.

We also went to La Plaza de Armas, which was the center of the original city and has lots of historical buildings, like the national post office and the Museum of National History.  I don't have pictures of any of this, since it's one of the worst areas for pickpockets in the city.  I went to the museum, while a bunch of the others went to the metropolitan cathedral.  It was really cool, especially since a couple of the Chilean guys were with me to explain the significance of the artifacts when the signs weren't in English.  We met up with the other group after the museum and got lunch.  We didn't have time to go to any other museums because they closed before we finished eating, so we did other things around the city.

That evening we went to a church in one of the really nice neighborhoods of Santiago.  We got off the metro right when church was starting, which we didn't think would be too much of a problem, since almost everything in Chile starts 10-15 minutes after it was scheduled to; however, when we got to the church, the singing had already started.  It was really cool, though.  Even though I didn't understand much, the worship was really great.  They had a choir singing, and they did a few songs that had been translated from English that I knew, and it was really cool.  The part of the sermon I understood seemed to be a gospel presentation, but I might have missed other parts.