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Day 1! So I conquered America. What´s next?

I arrived to Santiago in the morning (9.30 am). There was a driver waiting for me with a plate with my name (almost correctly spelled). A very nice Chilian guy, who entertained me all the way home with a lot of stories. He was very surprised when I´ve asked him to turn down the AC. It was still early and the thermometer showed only 24C. First impression after looking through the window? CLEAN!!! GREEN!!! While driving around the city, all you can see are green areas, lots of trees, flowers, etc. Trash? What trash! Here we clean a lot, señorita. Well yeah, you clean. But there are over 8 million people living here. The guy said: There could be even over 20 million but we care. We like to have our city clean. You know how difficult it is to live with the heavy cloud of smog just above the city? All of those green areas are our lungs. Here the driver got sad and expressed timidly hope that the new president will take more care of our green lungs.
We arrived to my new building. My new home. I got the keys from the consierge, took the lift to the 5th floor and first thing I saw through the window again were trees. Green again! I instantly started to like this place. After unpacking ultra quickly the first suitcase, I have jumped into my little-too-small-after-Christmas bikini and went straight to the 14th floor where the swimming pool is. The view is just incredible. The whole neighbourhood closed by the mountains. Yummy!
Later that afternoon, I walked to Juan´s office to pick him up and see him for the first time after over a month! A really cool neighbourhood. On my way there, I was passing next to the houses built on a hill - something that reminded me a little bit of San Francisco and many, many stores and bars and restaurants on the main street. We sat down in a bar close to Juan´s work and I ordered my first pisco sour in South America.
For those, who dont know what pisco sour is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisco_sour

After a few drinks we went to a nearby restaurant. I ordered some incredibly huge shrimps with a delicate cheese sauce (unknown combination for me before, but apparently typical in here) and a great local fish, which name I am not able to pronounce. The dinner was fabulous, but unrotunately, right afterwards (22:30), my eyes started to close and that was a sign - the day was over...

CONQUER AMERICA!

Day 0, the last day of preparations for the trip and time to say good bye to Madrid. I came to the airport 3h before the flight as advised on the boarding card and I thought that it was some kind of a stupid joke to make poeple wait and waste that much time at the airport. It didn´t take much time to realise that it was actually a really good piece of advice. It takes a lot of time to get from the main terminal to the additional one designed especially for the overseas trips. The personal check-in and baggage drop are also very time consuming. In the end, there are more than 400 passengers waiting to get on the same plane.
Finally, we started to board and we formed a line for the ticket control. When I finally got on the plane, I was mesmerized. The new Boeing 787-8 (if the memory serves me well) dreamliner, bought by chilian airline LAN, is absolutely fantastic. Comfortable, with wide aisles and incredibly modern! The Chilian flight attendants were trying all the time to keep all the passengers happy and they kept serving drinks and snacks. Everything stunning.
But what can you do for the enxt 14h of your flight?? I decided to listen (for the first time in my life) to Juan´s advice - "Wait until you get your dinner served, watch a movie and go to sleep afterwards." The guy was actually right! ;) Thanks to that, I managed to watch ¨The Great Gatsby¨ finally (my grade - B+), I got stuffed with food and just then went to sleep. I only woke up a few times to have a little walk around the plane and stretch my legs, but in general the trip went quite fast and I woke up for good just before breakfast. Perfect timing!
Now, that is a moment to remember! Eating breakfast while the pilot says that we are going to prepare for landing shortly and enjoying the view of the mountains right outside the window. The Andes are incredibly majestic and tall, and the moment when the mountain tops are allready above us in the clouds is a view I am not going to forget anytime soon! Undescribable and I highly recommend it to everyone ;)
Let´s just not get into the subject of the lines to get out of the plane and the airport. I could just use two words to describe it - ultra fast! Passport control, luggage claim and we are in Santiago, baby!