Awed

Once I finished my three-legged train journey to the southern tip of Italy today, all that was left was to catch a ferry, across the small channel that separates Sicily from the mainland. The ferry goes from Villa San Giovanni — a small coastal village in Calabria — across to Messina, one of the larger cities of Sicily. I don't know why they've never built a bridge or a tunnel over to Sicily: but anyway, the ferry is quite cool; not only do pedestrians ride on it, not only do cars and trucks drive onto it, but they even take the trains straight across on it! As for me, it was just my crazy self and my crazy bike that made the journey.

After my amazing breakfast this morning, I was ready to go out and explore Santiago, the city that I'd just arrived in late last night, and easily the furthest place south that I've been so far, in South America. I was planning to head straight to the downtown area, to start taking care of some housekeeping tasks that needed to be done. But I ended up spending several hours just walking around, staring in awe at this city, that's nothing like anywhere else I've been in South America. This place is really, really... well, really nice! It's so neat, the people are so trendy, the buildings are so grand, the buses and trains are so new — it's like being somewhere in Europe. A whole different world to PEB (Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador). A world called the Western world. The world that people like you and I live in. People from Santiago live in it too.