Meredith's Best Of Valpo

Well, everyone, my transitional state has me in an overly introspective mood as of late. Then, when I'm not being pensive, I'm running around trying to visit everyone I know in a 4 or 5 state area (not as bad as it sounds, I'm from New England), and both unpacking from Chile and re-packing for California.....which involves going through many storage boxes. All this combined leads to a substantial lack of interest in posting on the blog. I refer you to my previously flawless record of regular posting and thank you for your patience as I get my life rearranged.


In the meantime, I present to you: Meredith's Official Best of Valparaiso, Chile!



Food and Drink


Best budget dinner restaurant: Epif, international-style vegetarian food on Cerro Alegre


Best pricey dinner restaurant: Concepcion, cuisine nouveau, Calle Papudo on, you guessed it, Cerro Concepcion. Sit outside in the garden in the summer.


Best dinner with a view: Cafe Turri, Cerro Concepcion. Reserve a specific table for a good view, and don't forget to order the house cocktail, it's incredible.


Best lunch, full menu: Natur-In, Calle Condell, near Plaza O'Higgins (walk up Uruguay and take a right, it'll be on your left, big wooden door). Vegetarian, three course menu for 1,200, coming in at 2,000 if you order one of their delicious fresh juices (recommended).


Best quick & cheap lunch (and dinner): El Sandwich Cubano, Plaza Intendencia (kitty-corner from Lider). Get the Moros y Cristianos plate, it's the best thing on the menu and also the best deal.


Best (in that it is the only) place to eat on a Sunday: Allegretto, good pizzas and drafts, open late.


Best seafood: Any of the small shops near the fish market in the port.


Best sushi: Kookai, Plaza Victoria--actually owned by Japanese people, and graced by this sign:




Best salad: Mora, a bit down from El Sandwich Cubano in the direction of Lider.


Best ice-cream: The stand in the front section of the wood-facade restaurant in Plaza Anibal Pinto.


Best fruit wine: No, not sangria--fruit blended with wine. Tie between Barposeia and Ritual, side by side on Almironte Montt by Plaza Anibal Pinto.


Best tea menu: Cafe con Letras, Almironte Montt, Cerro Alegre.


Best coffee: Puro Cafe, Plaza Victoria. Just watch out: they claim to have wireless, but it never works.


Best scary, knock-you-down drink: El Suicidio, Pub Matiz, which oddly enough has two locations directly opposite one another on Subida Ecuador.


Best place to get a beer in the afternoon: "The Place With The Mean Waitresses," as dubbed by Elisa and myself: walk up Bellavista towards Subida Ecuador. It's on your left with a typical Fuente de Soda menu. You'll recognize it by a neon sign on the back wall that says "Chiloe," two TVs that are never playing the same thing, a jukebox, and a whole lot of old men lounging around with liters and cigarettes. Not recommended as a solo venture, but two drinking girls can have a nice time chatting and disrupting social conventions. Don't forget to order a liter each.



Nightlife



Best free evening (indoor) entertainment: Wednesday and Thursday nights at Boliche, Calle Cummings (as of my last residency, a great band and a comedy musical performance, respectively)


Best paid evening entertainment: Events at Teatro Mauri, Avenida Alemania


Best cultural events: Programming at La Sebastiana, Cerro Bellavista


Best club: La Sala, Port District, just ask someone for directions. I don't go to clubs unless I'm drunk enough to dance, which also means too drunk to pay attention to where exactly I am.


Best cafe-style bar: Pajaritos, Calle Donoso.


Best movie house: Cine Insomnia, Calle Condell


Best combo deal: Combo 1 at Coyote Quemado, Subida Ecuador: 1 taco, 1 shot of tequila, and 1 beer for 1 mil.


Best place for a cheap vodka: Abasto, Calle Cummings, next to the Ascensor La Reina. Don't let the 800 teenage fleites hanging out on the Ascensor's steps put you off, just wade through them and head on in, the bar's got a bouncer.


Best place for a terremoto: Bitacura, Calle Cummings, serves up a large and inexpensive pitcher of this pineapple-ice cream-alcohol concoction.


Best place for an expensive cocktail: El Trole, Calle Cummings, where you can sit in an old trolley and enjoy a nice atmosphere. Completely empty until at least 12:30.


Best bet for a late night snack: Otra Cosa, Almirante Montt, at Plaza Anibal Pinto. They always seem to be open and have dozens of different kinds of empanadas, some vegetarian, as well as completos and other such things.


Best live music: Wander around the Port district and you'll find lots of shows.


Best over-all entertainment: The festivals!


Best advice:Don't walk up stairway pasajes at night!




Tourist Jaunts



Best quirky spot to visit: Cemeterio Playa Ancha, with its hand-constructed budget pseudo-mausoleums. Don't miss the grave of Emile Dubois, Valpo's own unofficial saint, in the uphill right corner in the home-made section of the cemetary.


Best real-neighborhood walking tour: Cerros Polanco and Baron


Best cultural walking tour: Up and around Cerros Alegre and Concepcion, and don't forget the passageways. Then head up Almironte Montt to the circular shaped square and take a left onto Avenida Alemania. Enjoy the views and the various monuments as you make your way to Cerro Bellavista. Turn left on Calle Florida and visit Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastiana. Head down Cerro Bellavista, keeping to the right of the church, and wander the not-spectacular but satisfactory Museo a Cielo Abierto. Head down Ascensor Espiritu Santo, turn left on Calle Condell and visit the oh-so-strange museum of natural history.


Best day trip: Hiking Cerro La Campana (accesible by public transit)


Best near-by camping: Laguna Verde--neither a Laguna, nor Verde, but a great secluded beach. Catch a bus in front of Lider heading south, go past the actual town of Laguna Verde (ask the driver to let you off on the road to the lighthouse). ASK FOR DIRECTIONS when you get there on how to get to the beach, and don't trust small children (see linked post).


Best beach: I prefer the third beach north in Vina.


Best thing to do on a Sunday: Check out the antique/flea market in Plaza O'Higgins.


Best views of the city: Cerros Artilleria and Baron.



Goods and Services



Best laundry for the best price: Jerusalem, Plaza Anibal Pinto, middle portico in the large ugly gray building.


Best place to use Skype: Cerro @legre, Calle Urriola. Good connection, good headsets, and best of all, quiet--no gamers.


Best place to sit for hours using wireless, having ordered only one cup of tea: Desayunador, Cerro Alegre, Almironte Montt on the corner of Urriola. The wait staff is hard to flag down, but they also won't bother you even if you're there for 6 hours. Even better, all the booths are next to outlets and no one minds if you plug in.


Best used clothing: Calle Condell, on the right heading into the pedestrian portion of Subida Equador. Unsure of the name, but you'll see the racks of clothes. There's some decent stuff in there, particularly if you're heading to a theme party.


Best new clothing: Unfortunately, you'll have to head to the---ugh---mall in Vina if you need something nice. Take a bus marked Libertad and get off at 18 Norte, you'll see it. If you have the time, sometimes decent things can be found in Ripley (Plaza Victoria) or Polar (Avenida Argentina), and they'll be much cheaper than the mall.


Best multi-lingual bookstore: At the very bottom of Calle Cummings, at the corner with Plaza Anibal Pinto.


Best kept financial secret: Banks close at 2pm, but you can also cash checks from many Chilean banks at ServiPag (best office is in the financial district, ask which street as I can't recall).


Best place for cheap produce: The market house, near the end of Avenida Brasil, and the Saturday markets on Avenida Argentina and in the port.


Best place to buy fish: The fish market in the port. There is no fish, repeat no fish, in the supermarket (Lider).


Best place to buy anything under the sun, for cheap: Avenida Argentina, Saturdays and Sundays.


Best place to buy cheap bags and luggage: Walking from Plaza Victoria towards the Terminal de Bus on Pedro Montt, a few blocks up on the left side, is a place with medium sized backpacks for 2mil, small suitcases for 4, etc.


Best deal on a bus to Argentina: Cata, cleverly hidden on the second floor of the Terminal de Bus.


Best place to rent a car: Walk along Calle Independencia near Plaza O'Higgins, there are several rental places. An economy car can be rented for 16.000 a day.


Best way to find an apartment: Walk around the neighborhood and look for signs in the windows; avoid rental agencies.

Lost lyrics

I am not a fish out of water. I am a fresh water fish too far down the river, the salt of the estuary entering my respiration.

I am sitting around a crowded table at the port bar that celebrated its centennial recently. At the far end a man in a dowdy green sweater is reading poetry from sheets of paper that swish loudly as he switches them in front of the silent crowd. He is awkwardly hunched at the microphone under a liquid orange beam of light. Dim lights shine under the bar, and the tea lights on the tables cast twinkling glares, and the pulsing ends of cigarettes move without hurry back and forth from mouths to ashtrays. I sip my beer in the dark, staring at the man.

I understand most of his words. I cannot hear poetry. Poetry is such a function of intimacy with language. The breath-catching moments are the combinations of words that have seemed always to have no relation to one another until suddenly they appear together, perfect, like a secretly eloped couple. I know nothing of common or uncommon modes of expression in this language. It is only recently that 'expression' could even be applied to my functioning in Spanish.

All I can follow is the tone in the reading, the signs of emotion and rythym in the words. This man reads like a lecturer--steadily, clearly, but dully. His poetry sounds like a town hall opening ceremony if I close my eyes. I look around the table to see how the others are responding. One poet leans to another and they whisper something and laugh: is the poetry bad? Or is it only friends sharing a beer, ignoring the speaker for the moment? I remember in the beginning days when I would sit at the table with the host family, wondering if they were talking about me. It's a similar kind of paranoia. I am a lone gringa listening to poetry in Spanish. I feel superfluous, worthy of mockery: a poser. The room is dead silent. No one speaks, claps or whispers betwen poems. We sit staring at the man as he shifts his papers and begins again. There is a lot of staring in this country. Too much, I think, wishing someone would comment or drum or even do that terrible snapping of fingers.

The man finishes and finally the crowd claps. I lean over and tell my friend about the poetry slams that used to be popular; how I would go and sit in the back quietly while the older, hipper crowd would shout and cheer and hoot. Once I wore leather pants from a second hand store, a push towards cool. The poet noticed these and used me in his act. I blushed like I still do when something embarasses me or catches me off guard. They asked me to judge and I lied and told them I had to leave, but sat, bright red, through the rest of the show. I lost that poet's photocopied booklet years ago, but would have liked the chance to look back on it now.

Other than the silence, the atmosphere is familiar, making me feel all the more alien. I look around my table at all of the figurines that have decorated my life so many times, in so many guises. The three young poets: one man in a velvet jacket, hair dishevelled; another in button-up plaid with curly hair combed out to be large; the woman beautiful with wild waves in her hair and dark eyeliner on both lids. At her shoulder, the affectionate and flamboyant film student gestures, wearing an antiquated suit with a silk vest, his lined eyes and labret piercing signalling his contemporaneity. Then there is the painter in his argyle sweater and page boy cap, leaning precariously over the candle to hand me scraps of english to edit, bits and pieces to be sent to an uncertain love in Canada. At my side, the unexpected arrival still carrying his camping gear is awkwardly above us on a scrambled-for bar stool. Finally, at the end of the table, an old and muttering poet in a knitted skullcap, papers somewhere within his worn leather bag. He is talking across me to the young poets. They are discussing flowers in Santiago in spring. This relates to women, somehow, and then to ways of perceiving.

I am sure that I have been here before.

One of the trio of word gamers from my table is called to the front by the announcer. A few copies of his recently published book make their way from bags onto our table. The person next to me flips through with purpose to find the poems as they are spoken, to help me. I explain that seeing the words won't make them anymore electric to me than hearing them. I prefer to listen. His poems punch the air with the impression of meaning. The improvement in style leaves me with a lower comprehension, but I enjoy his reading better than the last.

The young man returns, the bar claps loudly, and the old man is called. He rustles through the bag a little too long and then makes his way to the front of the room. He begins speaking, but the mike is on the table. He realizes this after a few sentences, whether of his own accord or from a tip I cannot tell. Rearranged, he begins to read in the rocking, near autistic way of those who live their lives fully within their art. It is, needless to say, unintelligible to me. I like it though, better than the lecturing fumbler, better than the confident and snapping man my age. The tones rise and fall and whatever these words are, whatever they might signify to the people sitting with me, I sit watching them mean absolutely everything to the poet.

I am watching a man read his poetry; I am watching a man deliver his art; that is all. Without signification, without relationship to me, I watch the words matter to him. When he returns to the table I tell him how much I enjoyed watching his reading despite understanding nothing. The film student throws his head back and laughs, delighted, clapping at the joke. I light his cigarette and laugh too, even though I wasn't joking.