Wed/Thurs, Sept 25/26, 2019

Maurice had agreed to pick us up at 5:30 pm in order for us to catch our flight back to Houston at 9:30 pm and we had to check out of the hotel by noon,  so we decided to spend the morning touring the downtown area and perhaps do a little shopping.    We spent most of the morning walking around the downtown area before returning to the hotel for a coffee break.    At 3:30, I went for another walk and came upon ‘ Castillo Hidalgo ‘, which is a castle that was built on St. Lucia Hill in the middle of Santiago in order to protect the city.   It was renovated and made into an event centre, however, many of the areas of the castle have been neglected and need restoration.

The castle occupies a large area and extends all the way to the top of the rocky hill.  When you get to the very top, you are above most of the high-rise buildings in Santiago.  The picture below of the canon is about 20 feet below the very top of the castle outlook.

I returned to the hotel at 5 pm and Maurice was there shortly afterwards to pick us up and take us to the airport.  We arrived at the airport 4 hours before our flight left so we had some time to make the 20 minute trek to our gate and check our some stores along the way.

Our flight was on time and we left shortly after 9 pm.

We slept as much as wee could on our overnight flight and arrived in Houston at 6 am, cleared customs, picked up our bags, had them re-scanned and transferred to our Cleveland flight and then trekked another 20 minutes to our gate.    Pete was able to get us moved to first class and we had a comfortable 2+ hour flight that arrived in Cleveland at noon.

We picked up our bags and took the long-term parking shuttle to Pete’s car.   Pete drove Fr Richard to his house before driving home.   I transferred my bags to my car and started driving home at 1:15 pm.

It took me longer than usual to get home because there were two major road constructions in progress, one at the Pennsylvania border and one near Hamburg on the I90.   There was also a tanker truck that had jack-knifed onto the median and was stopped from crossing into oncoming traffic by the railing and the accident had backed up traffic for miles.    My GPS rerouted me along the south shore of Lake Erie at the Hamburg construction site because the traffic was stop-and-go.   This was much better and it kept me moving at a good pace.   By the time I arrived at home, it was 6:15 pm.