A Few Rooms Ocean View
DESTINATIONSWe returned to the coast after lunch, stopping at Pablo Neruda’s Valparaiso home. He wanted a place to escape from Santiago to study and to write in peace and quiet. He wanted a view, but privacy. Friends of his found him a place begun by a Spanish architect who had built five floors on a hill overlooking the ocean. It was a bit of a rabbit warren–the whole third floor was designed as a birdcage! But the architect died before it was finished, in 1949, and Neruda remodeled it. Quirky and interesting, tiny stairwells linking the floors but each with spectacular vantage points.
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| The Mazda 2 on Avenida Ferrari, a two-way street, with parking, at about 17 per cent grade. |
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| View from the living room |
The most interesting thing in the house, for me, was a map of the world, from 1689, by a French cartographer, which had California as an island stretching from Mexico to Washington. Don’t have a picture of that but there were other maps and curios that were absorbing and you had to wonder how he came across them.
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| Fourth floor. Of five. |
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| On this map the cartographer mistook the Chilean people for the spice |
In the end I asked SS: Ever read Neruda? And he said no and I said that I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone who has…
We retired to our terrace for some sun and after our mega lunch just took a club sandwich in the hotel mid-evening.