El Escalón

- District 3, West San Salvador: Torre Futura, World Trade Center, WTCSS, Galerias

The West part is the safest and richest part of the city. In El Escalón you find many middle class neighbourhoods with tons of lowrise private residences, as well as some of San Salvador's best and largest shopping malls. The malls of San Salvador has a very good standard, and some of the best ones are situated here; Centro Comercial Galerias is perhaps the best mall I ever visited, great architecture with a mix of modern and postmodern and a neo-classic heritage building from 1950 inside, and I found everything I wanted there. Galerias is situated on 4 floors and features 133 stores on 115 000 m² fountains, waterfalls and glass elevators, as well as a train and a merry-go-round for children. The mall was actually built around the old heritage building, called La Casona, that is owned by a Palestinian family, and hosts a Starbucks and other cafés on 3 floors. From the food court on the upper floor, you will not only find almost all wellknown fastfood brands, there are also panoramic glass windows with great views of the city! The Galerias mall opened in 1995, and in 2006 an additional floor was built to accomodate a large branch of the Mexican cinema chain Cinépolis.

World Trade Center San Salvador (WTCSS), built in 2009, is a complex where you not only find office buildling but also an outdoor shopping mall, a plaza, a pound with fountains, restaurants with views over the city. El Salvador and Panama are the only countries in Central America that have a WTC, and many embassies have offices there. The landmark of the complex is Torre Futura. The 20-storey Torre Futura, designed by KMD Architects, is the 3rd tallest (92m) in El Salvador (4th tallest in Central America excluding Panama) and one of the most modern office buildings in the city. It is a "green and intelligent building", since it limits solar light and takes full input of natural light. The mall is called Plaza Futura. There is a walkway to the 4-star Crowne Plaza Hotel from the complex.

There are several Chinese restaurants in El Salvador, as well as Mexican restaurants, Italian restaurants etc. Many of them are situated in El Escalón.