My computer told me while typing this in the Vegas that a wireless network is in range. As further investigation gave the server as partisocialistchile I decided not to pursue the matter and to continue to use the free service available in the lobby.
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We had a rotten night's sleep for some reason. Frances recalls that we used to experience this for several nights when flying to New York. So tonight will be antihistamine revisited! When we did get to sleep it was for a reasonable time so we didn't wake until 8:45. Still in time for breakfast, where most of the other guests seem to be liable to be accused of being French.
The first part of the day was prowling the streets behind the Hotel as we kept seeing interesting things. The first of these was a distant church that looked quite impressive, but became less so as we got closer and the broken glass became evident. Inside it was relatively unadorned, and had a service happening so we didn't hang around.
The next thing spotted was an avenue of fountains with statuary at the end. This turned out to run through the offices of the public service agencies (including the Statistics Office). The avenue began at the site of the previous night's rally which made it in incongruous that the main merchandise on offer in the shops under the offices (at least at the end near the Treasury building) were armaments of nasty types. An example which has stuck in my mind was something that looked like an AK47 for Peso 190,000 which is about $US300! Long live the revolution?
We then wandered back to the Cathedral as there appeared to be a singalong mass on offer. There was a mass but no special singing seemed to happen so we took ourselves off to the Museum of PreColumbian Art which was very good. Far better than the Archaeological place we visited on the previous day. It basically covered every culture South of the Rio Grande and North of Antarctica from whenever to about 1491AD. They very kindly - and unusually -translated fair proportion of the signs into English. I doubt if this was much help to our fellow residents of the Vegas.
At some point during the day I noticed these dogs panhandling food from a passing cyclist. They appeared to be strays - they were there before the lady turned up - but as can be seen are in pretty good nick.
By the time we had finished there we were ready for a meal at the posh part of the market. This was very pleasant, after rejecting a hard sell by one lady we revisited a little guy (ie a typical Chilean) but who had told us yesterday that he had been to Australia three times. Frances had a seafood casserole, despite being told it was 'very heavy' which she interpreted as meaning too much for a woman. Indeed I had to assist, since I had finished my Gambeta or shrimps. Both very tasty, and washed down with half a bottle of Santa Rita Cabernet. We paid Ps1000 ($2.50) to the serenading musicians and when the bill was presented were advised clearly that it didn't include the waiter's tip. Fortunately for arithmetic Ps20k amounted to a tip very close to 10% and this seemed quite acceptable.
After a short walk along the river and back through a few streets we got to the Plaza del Armas (image left - note the banners on the front of the Cathedral) to watch the procession for Carmen of the Andes (who may or may not be a Saint, but is impossible to
find out anything about on the net). It also involved references to Beata Laura Vicuna 
(see image below) and Santa Teresa de los Andes. (Who said this blog wasn't educational?) This turned out to be quite good fun watching a whole bunch of people and some brass bands get ready to march. I think they would have got off a lot sooner if the priest/archbishop(?) hadn't kept rabbiting on. After an hour there was still no sign of the icon of Carmen (see image at top) heading off, although the bands were doing little dance efforts and had shifted a few hundred metres by this time. As it was by now raining steadily we headed for the hotel.
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