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Spent a comfortable night sleeping on the overnight buses reclining seats and woke just before 7am ready for our arrival just before 8.00. Unloaded our bags straight into a taxi. By 8.30 we were booked into our hotel room.
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Spent the rest of the day relaxing and catching up on a few odd jobs.
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Saturday 14 February 2004
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We had read that there was a book exchange at Avenue Providencia 1652, so we took a ride on the modern metro changing once to get to Pedro de Valdivia. Explored along the road to find the shop, set back in a small courtyard. There were quite a number of titles without any obvious catagorisation, but exploring through we easily found a couple of books to suit us and to swop for books we had already read.
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Also in the courtyard was a couple of other bookshops, a music store and a couple of boutiques. Also there was the 'Phone Box Pub', a restaurant / bar with a red British phone box for a front door. Shaded tables with imitation tartan table cloths were set out in the courtyard, under a vine covered pagola. Carriage lamps were mounted on the posts. The quiet shaded courtyard was pleasantly relaxing. Being St Valentines Day heart shaped balloons with hung about and a St Valentines Day special was on offer - curry - hardly the meal for lovers! We choose the meat course. One of the delights of choosing from a foreign menu is that you are never completely sure what you will be served but it is rarely a disappointment, and today was no different. We were served with two escolops of beef each with a portion of chips, the South Americans don't normally serve up any vegetables, but the beef had had small cuts made in it and slithers of carrot and garlic inserted. Together with a roll, beer and coffee the meal cost us 3500 pesos (#3.50) each.
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To get back to the city centre we decided to follow the Rio ?, which nearly joins up both points. Headed north-west for a couple of blocks before reaching the river and turning left down stream to follow the left-hand bank. A considerable amount of work was being carried out to improve the river setting and to accomplish this the river was being constrained to just a quarter of its normal width by a flood wall. Brown muddy waters rushed along 5m below the promenade on which we were walking. But despite the work being carried out the stroll through the riverside park was still pleasant and in years to come will undoubtedly be even better.
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The linear park was no more than about 10m wide, constrained on the left-hand edge by a road, with a path snaking through, sometimes at the rivers edge and sometimes more to the centre. Sometimes the path was gravel, others concrete, and others reclaimed brick. Every 50m or so the path would open out into a small shaded plaza of varying designs. An exercise course followed the path with poles and posts set up for pull ups and jumps with signs suggesting how they could be used. After a while, after reaching a modern bridge, with kiosks set in it, the riverside park came to an end but on the other side of the road, following the same course was an even grander linear park with children's play areas, large areas of grass and a couple of museums.
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