The most impressive thing about Santiago as we came into the capital was the Andes Mountains ringing the city. However this was quickly overshadowed by the giant letters that descended from the sky spelling out the name of the city. Luckily these giant letters did not impede our landing but they did make travel within the city difficult.

Our group came quite close to the giant letter ‘T’. It, like the other letters, hung above all the buildings except for the nearby Gran Torre Costanera, the city’s tallest building. Constanera tower is a 62 story skyscraper, around 1000 feet tall. Judging from that I estimated the letters to each be around 750 feet high. Despite their bizarre nature we opted to continue on with the rest of our day in the city.

After viewing the giant letter we made our way to the top of Costanera Tower to get a better view of the city. Surprisingly there was no line to get to the top of the building, and after a brief ride up the elevator we were greeted to stunning view of Chile’s capital and largest city. The letters unfortunately obscured some parts of the city, but they were not enough to take away from the beautiful views.