It was nice to have an apartment and put the kettle on while still in pajamas. It was a lazy morning, drinking numerous coffees while leisurely watching the morning traffic and the views across the city to the mountains.

We eventually managed to get out and made our way to the metro to get back to the bus station. Tickets to Mendoza, Argentina can sell out fast and we wanted tickets for Sunday. We managed to get semi-cama seats on CATA bus, we'll see what they are like.

With our onward travel sorted, we could now enjoy the city so we took the metro to Universidad Catolica station and walked through the Lastarria neighbourhood. We grabbed a quick lunch at one of the many restaurants - nothing flash, just a basic menu del dia washed down with a glass of red wine.

"Tours 4 Tips" had two separate free walking tours and we wanted to join the afternoon 'Santiago Highlights' tour. We were a bit early for the 3pm meeting in front of the Bellas Artes museum so we went to grab a coffee from a cafe we saw had an espresso machine.

The guides from "Tours 4 Tips" dress like Wally from "Where is Wally?" to help them standout from the crowd. Today's Wally was Matias, a final year Eco-Tourism student. Following introductions from himself and everyone in the group, he gave us three key words to remember throughout the tour because we would be told more about them later - the three words were 'quiltro', 'allende' and 'mapuche'.

The tour moved off down a side street and we were shown a mural recently painted by a famous Chilean mural painter Inti. The guy now lives in Paris and is commissioned to paint murals around the world. His mural depicted 'Chile Today' and he based them around small dolls (which cannot remember the name of) given to people, that carry charms but he had them carrying things representing different aspects of Chilean society. Normally the dolls are male but he drew one as a female representing the new female role in society. The male had empty book and Chilean flag scarf in front of his face presenting the ongoing discussions with the government over education. Students are continually demonstrating to demand cheaper university education, at the moment if loan is required to be able to study the students end up paying up to 3 times the cost of the tuition for their degree. Demonstrations tend to turn ugly and hence the face scarf for identity protection.

From the same spot in the street, the different architectural styles of the buildings within the same block were pointed out. Chile suffers constantly from earthquakes and the city gets modernised little by little every time a building is damaged.

'Quiltros' are the street dogs in Chile and opposed to being aggressive, territorial animals, they are the pets of the people. The dogs are taken better care of than homeless people, they are all healthy and get well fed by people. Sometimes they are even given coats in the winter to keep them warm. In turn, they are incredibly friendly, always happy to be petted and will even walk along the street with you for a while. They are known to take the public bus for a few blocks but they are not allowed in the metro. They also love chasing and barking at taxis for some reason.

We made our way through the streets to Plaza de Armas but there were works going on in the middle to make it greener and better lit at night to improve safety. They are even putting in free WiFi.

Walking round the hoardings on the Plaza, we made our way to the Cathedral entrance. It was possible to walk through from one side to the other and is very elaborately decorated.

Matias then gave an explanation of coffee consumption in Chile. When coffee was first being exported by it's neighbouring countries, Chileans didn't drink much coffee, they preferred (and still do) tea. In an attempt to increase coffee sales they introduced a concept called 'Cafe con Piernas' (Coffee with Legs). Cafes, which are only open during typical office hours, have girls in very short skirts and tight tops serving the drinks. It's tightly controlled and cafes are forbidden to sell alcohol and have frosted windows showing only heads and lower legs from the outside. There are some new types of 'Cafe con Piernas' which have blacked out windows, loud music and longer hours where girls will serve drinks in various states of undress.

We walked round to Palacio de Moneda, Chile's Presidential office. Presidents don't actually live there, they live in their own apartments/houses. It was also the scene of quite an incredible military coup. Salvador Allende, a former president of Chile, was thrown out of power by military coup under the command of General Pinochet. Allende was considered a bit too socialist for Chile's upper class and with their backing the palace was bombed. There is debate until today whether Allende committed suicide or not although after an exhumation 40 years later, Chile's High Court decided it was suicide. The public are still divided on their own opinion. There are buildings round the plaza which still have the bullet hole marks from the army who shot at the snipers defending Allende. A statue in the plaza was never repaired and the statue still has a hole under the left eye.

We walked through the plaza and across the road into the Paris/London neighbourhood. The architecture of the area has been copied from the two cities and it also has the oldest church in Santiago and heaps of cafes and restaurants. It is the only part of Santiago that has curved streets which is also copying the streets of London and Paris.

A little further up the road is Cerro Santa Lucia, a small hill within the city. It's possible to walk up the hill to the 'castle' for views across the city but our tour didn't have time for that. We walked past on the lower level to the park at the rear. It was here that we were told about 'PDA' (public display of affection) by the locals. Because of the conservative nature of families and not living together before marriage, they must display their affection in public. Some of them take it a bit too far though and really ought to get a room.

We continued our walk to Barrio Lastarria, where we had lunch, but now the restaurants and cafes were full of the Friday afternoon office crowds. The best ice cream place was pointed out as we worked through the streets to the Opus Dei church of Santiago. It seems that Opus Dei (think Da Vinci Code) has considerable sway in politics and education as well as religion in Chile.

The Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre was absolutely buzzing with lots of kids dancing outside. They use the floor to ceiling windows as mirrors while they practice their dance moves.

The final stop of our tour was in a bar where they gave us a free drink of strawberries and red wine called something we forgot. It was nice enough but their beer was better. We had a couple more drinks chatting with another Scottish guy, a Kiwi couple, an American, a Dane and our guide.

The sun had dropped by the time we left and we walked back to our apartment through Parque Forestal. Even though it was getting dark, the park was still really busy.

There were plenty of restaurants and places to eat on the way back to our apartment but we were determined to make use of the kitchen. It wasn't the best kitchen but David made some fantastic fajitas which we ate overlooking the city lights.