Bellavista

Past the arts and crafts market and hidden within the dirty, cheap bars along Avenida Pio Nono, where the students of Santiago love to hang out, you can find Patio Bellavista, a courtyard filled with gourmet restaurants ranging in prices, interspaced between expensive but "one of a kind" clothes shops, art handicrafts, jewellery stores and more. And within the walls of this concentrated space, you can find the heart of the Bellavista bohemian culture, in other words good art, good culture and good cuisine.

It was here I took my parents to eat one fine sunny day. We relished the opportunity to sit outside without the pollution and hassle of passing cars, and enjoyed the menu del dia for a mere $11. With a Pisco Sour to start off, we enjoyed the succulent 3 courses as the sun sunk deep in our pores giving us that true "I'm on holidays" feeling.

A short walk through the streets lined with charismatic historic houses and green fresh trees, we reached Chile's very own poet Pablo Neruda's house, La Chascona. One of three of Nerudas's houses, La Chascona is famously designed to imitate a ship at sea, for although Neruda could neither swim nor sail, he was totally obsessed with everything nautical. His international contacts from being a diplomat enabled his soulful words to reach a universal scale and his friendship with all the best artists around the world helped to create the most mystic, catalyst of houses (Isla Negra being the most impressive), where he was able to open up his dreams of the sea; that is until his untimely death during the Pinochet era.

The house was left to his third wife, Matilde, after whom the house is named (because of her unruly hair). She turned all three houses into museums, not before the Pinochet regime burned all the books lining the walls of La Chascona's library though. Neruda was an outspoken Communist and unfortunately that didn't go down too well during the coup d'état.

Bellavista also houses Cerro San Cristobal, the tallest hill of about 300m in the middle of Santiago city. The original funicular lines are still used to take tourists up the hill, where they can overlook a panorama of the entire urban jungle, unless it's a smoggy day of course, which is pretty much most of the time. (For the best views, it is best to head there just after it has rained). Atop Cerro San Cristobal sits a church and 22m statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And for those of you who are interested, there is also a zoo half way up the hill, which also backs onto La Chascona. Apparently the zoo was there first and that's why the land was so cheap for Neruda to buy, and once he did, all the artists wanted to live there too. Now, like I said, Bellavista is renowned for its bohemian culture. Funny that.