There is this funny thing about traveling: we feel so privileged and humbled to get to experience the world away from our homes that we sometimes put this weird pressure on ourselves that we need to get excited about or fall in love with every single place we visit.

Frankly, I did not like Santiago de Chile nor Valparaíso as much I had hoped. Maybe it had to do with the coldness of the hostels that I was staying at, or the fact that most of the restaurants and shops were closed due to a 3-day long public holiday which turned them into ghost towns. Or maybe, I simply did not like these two places.

Ha! Why is this so hard to accept sometimes?

Nonetheless, I did find some little gems to enjoy. Like hiking the dunes in Viña del Mar, which made me feel like I'm in the middle of a desert somewhere in Tunisia. Or enjoying the colorful blossom on Santa Lucía Hill in Santiago, definitely making my day on a cloudy morning. Or having a lunch at a small fish restaurant Tre Pesces in Valparaíso's hippy neighborhood Concepción (to be fair, the only one open!).

So perhaps it is not so much about needing to love it all, but about finding such gems (big or small) and remembering them as they grew to our hearts, in one way or another.

Kindly,

Neva.