Valparaiso - Chile

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

Valparaiso is a city suffused with history and art. It breathes an inspiring cityscape of paint, sculpture and music at every turn. Our hotel is next door to an Academie de Musica so we breakfast with the sounds of classical music and opera filtering in through the windows. Tiny, windy streets twist, climb and sharply drop. They criss-cross and weave their way over the countless ridges and canyons the city has grown into over the many years. I feel at home with the many precariously placed homes that teeter on the edges of the hillsides. So much like the Canyon in Sierra Madre.

Grafitti is everywhere. Mosaics of tile and mirror glass cover street embankments. Peering into alleys you may see paintings of fang toothed kittens attacking bunny eared girls, or a couple of people kicking back on a non-existent back porch. Rich and I wandered the city for hours soaking it all in, tripping out on how extensive and fine the qualityof art was wherever you looked. This is no town for a tagger.