Pablo Neruda sin duda

I can see why Pablo Neruda was over come with inspiration here. The open air is accessible from every house, the metro stations (with the exception of Vina del Mar which opens to the sky like the DC Dupont Circle Orpheus rising out of Hell) and so far I have seen two of his houses. The first one we visited was in Santiago was built for his curly headed mistress (La Chascona)and was built to resemble the feel of a boat.
 
This picture does not do the house justice, but you, my dear reader, needed to see the front. And you needed to see the resident Chasonas. Here is an internal view.

I loved the art work surrounding his house and the green living room with the Diego Rivera double headed picture with Pablo´s silhouette.Can you see it?

I also liked how the house was seperated into four locations that required walking outside to enter. The last room was full of maps and globes and books had a great view of the cascading steps. The second house, La Sebastiana, in Bellavista, Valparaiso was certainly it´s name sake, and a beautiful view.
 
This house was stacked on top of eachother rather than spread out and had six floors. The narrow wrap staircases were fun to traverse but maybe not for a tall or wide person... Neruda? Now that I think about it, there is no way they got the furniture up through the house. There were more windows in these rooms which I loved but a lot more gaudy decore. His book of odes was written in this house and I couldn´t help send some love to Joel and his alcochofas.

The top floor was the meeting point for all the ISA students and everyone had their backs turned from the room stairing out into the mix of houses, lazy cats roaming the cobblestone streets, cozy cafe´s nesseled between mosaic trees and rising behind all,the green teal of the Pacific tossing boats to and fo. The phrase I kept hearing was "I could be a poet if I lived here too" Maybe that is true but we do live here and nothing is stopping you from being a poet but yourself.

Art is everywhere in Chile because no one is afraid.


If my computer worked here,I could have better pictures. These are all from facebook. Sorry to disapoint you.

¡Vive Chile!
raquel