From what I've told, most foreign tourists spend little time in Santiago. They primarily go to the two top tourist destinations which are Torres del Paine and San Pedro de Atacama. However, that doesn't mean that this city doesn't have its charm. Maybe you have to look a little closer than some other cities like Buenos Aires, but there are some treasures to behold.
One thing a lot of people don't know about is the street names and the system for naming those streets. I'm not talking about your typical American town with Elm Street, Main Street and Spruce Street. I am talking about a city with seven million inhabitants who all live on streets with names. It would be one thing to give all streets a name, but this town goes even further: street names are grouped in clusters of themes, so you will have a neighborhood whose streets are named after composers like Chopin, Bach and Ravel. Then you will have another neighborhood with the names of famous authors...and another with painters, and so on. Where I live, some streets are named after the estate owners whose land was later divided into city blocks with (what else?) streets running through them.
Sometimes street names repeat themselves in different comunas (political divisions similar to boroughs), so it is important to check the name of the comuna along with the street before heading out, otherwise you could potentially go off course and wind up at the other end of the city
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