From Puerto Varas, we moved on to Chile’s capital – Santiago. Santiago is a city of around seven million citizens, and it offers just about anything you could want. We were here seven years ago for the Depeche tour and we both remembered liking Santiago, but we didn’t have specific reasons that we could remember why. Having spent the last week here, one of the big reasons is how quiet it is for a city of this size. There isn’t a ton of horns blaring in traffic. They have established a beautiful network of parks for running and biking and walking. Certainly with a town this size you would expect the restaurant scene to be well developed, and it does not disappoint. There are all kinds of neighborhoods to explore.
The journey from Puerto Varas was easy. No problems returning Taylor (the rental car) at the airport and they had a small lounge in the airport where we grabbed snacks before our 90-minute flight up to Santiago. We flew on Jetsmart this time – new airline for us and it was fine – typical budget airline, but unlike Flybondi, this one ran on schedule. It was easy to get an Uber at the airport and we were at our new home – an apartment in central Santiago around 3:30. We were hungry, so we walked a few minutes to a Chinese restaurant and had good lunch meals and we put our plan together for our week in Santiago.
After lunch, we went back to apartment and got settled. The building has 24 floors and we were on the 10th. The laundry drying rack wasn’t there, so our host had her mom drop a new one off along with some cleaning supplies. We got our grocery shopping done at the Lider Express just around the corner. The Lider brand is owned by Walmart. We’ve done quite a bit of grocery shopping there as the stores tend to have the most variety and have the most convenient locations.
For our workouts in Santiago, we did a four-mile run through the network of parks going east from the Fine Arts Museum (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes), two four-mile runs west of the museum (this was our favorite because it was less crowded but still through the parks), a four-mile walk up and around Cerro Santa Lucia (the hill right near our apartment), and then we did a workout at the SmartFit location near our apartment. We crossed April 1st this week, so we had an office day in the apartment to do our monthly office work. We spent time planning upcoming travel and lodging during this week.
We explored several neighborhoods including our own, which is basically the historic center near Plaza de Armas (Santiago’s main square). We were just east of the area that would not necessarily be recommended to stay in, and everything was perfect for us. Lastarria is the next neighborhood east and we had a nice walk around that area – lots of artwork and museums. The Barrio Italia neighborhood was great – our Sunday afternoon there included a big wine festival that was happening. Lots of people and just a fun vibe in the area.
We only had chocolate milkshakes at a bean to bar chocolate store there, but there were plenty of Italian restaurants from which we could have chosen if we were hungry. That neighborhood might be one we’d look at first if we were going to move to Santiago. We also spent time walking around the major markets of Santiago – the fish market and the produce markets. The produce market was huge and offered more than produce, but that was the primary offering. I don’t know if the picture shows it very well, but we were impressed with all of the produce, especially the size of the corn – as big as this man’s upper arm.
Restaurant highlights from this week: our first dinner out was at Quitral in the Lastarria neighborhood. Sandy had chicken and broad beans that were quite spicy. I had ceviche. She also had mango juice and I had a pisco sour. The service was great and we liked it so much that we returned a couple of nights later. We enjoyed a burger and now probably my new favorite wings, since we started our travels, at El Honesto Mike – they are very close to the wings I just had in Puerto Varas, but the flavor on these might have been just a little closer to the buffalo style I like from home. One of our stops this week was the Factoria Franklin, which is a great concept – what was an old empty warehouse has been converted to an artist and restaurant center on the weekends. Lots to offer and we had some of the best sandwiches we’ve had in a while at a spot called Weekend 310. We shared a pastrami sandwich and a steak and cheese sandwich. In addition to them being so good, the family that owns the place were very kind and we just enjoyed our time there. They asked us to write on their wall, which was of course our pleasure.
One of the best experiences this week was the night we went to Valentina’s house to learn to make empanadas. We booked this experience through AirBnB (Eatwith is another of our favorite tools for these kinds of experiences). Valentina welcomed us into her home and proceeded to walk us through the whole process of making four styles of empanadas based on her grandmother’s recipe. They each had the same ingredients – we filled them with beef and onions mainly – but the styles were in how you folded the empanada dough. Pino is the traditional Chilean style and it is folded into a rectangular shape. We had so much fun, the empanadas were excellent, and a serious highlight was when Valentina said that one of her ways of learning English was by listening to none other than Depeche Mode. That gave me chills when she said that. So much fun!
Friday was also a highlight – we started at the Starbucks on the same block as our apartment and then went around the corner to Croq Delice for delicious crepes – Sandy had potato, egg, and cheese and I had ham and cheese. Then we made our way to the Concha y Toro winery outside of town. We took two metros and then asked for help figuring out the microbus process that dropped us off right outside the winery. We had our tour tickets scheduled for 2:20 and Felipe started promptly on time. He was a great tour guide. He spoke very good English and was very welcoming to the five of us on our tour. One guy was from Japan and then we got to meet Ami and Pal from London who were also on our tour. It was nice getting to know them and it’s quite possible that our paths will cross again down the road somewhere. We got to try several different wines on our tour and we got to go down to the Casillero del Diablo (Devil’s Cellar) where the wines are stored in their barrels and this is the label that most people around the world would recognize from the Concha y Toro winery. Each barrel holds enough wine for 200 bottles. I accidentally spilled some wine on Sandy’s white shirt, which gave us a chance to buy some of the winery’s red wine stain remover. That stuff is magical. After the tour, it was off to the restaurant for a version of a pisco sour made with Carmenere wine instead of pisco liquor. We also had ceviche, a pino empanada, lasagna, and braised beef with a corn puree. The whole experience was top notch and we had a beautiful day for it. Then we headed back home the same way we came and Sandy got to chat with our friend Sarah for a couple of hours that night.
To really understand the places we go, I like to read as much as I can about the history, the people, the culture. Among the most difficult times in Chile took place between 1973 and 1990 when Augusto Pineche led Chile as a brutal right-wing dictator and he caused thousands of his adversaries to “disappear.” An outstanding museum has been created in memory of those lost. It is called the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. We spent a couple of hours there learning about how this came to be, how people survived, and how Chile has worked to recover. One of the most moving displays was the candlelight vigil with pictures of those who disappeared. I’ve also found six online library books that are going to probably take me the rest of the year to read, but we’ll see how it goes. Chile has a very interesting history and I want to learn more.
Although we have been in South America for about two months, it’s still not totally second nature to realize we are going into fall and winter here (especially when the calendar tells us it’s April and Easter is around the corner). You have to look for the sun and moon in the northern part of the sky instead of the southern part of the sky and that is getting easier to realize without having to really think about it. The leaves continue to change. It feels weird because we haven’t experienced a spring since we were in Europe last year. And then this week, we changed our clocks and instead of moving them forward, we moved them back. Usually we’d be moving them forward at this time of year, but not when you’re down south.
A great week here in Santiago comes to a close. If we were going to live in Chile, this is probably where we’d pick because of everything it offers. There are a lot of places we’d go back and visit though. But let’s see – we still have more to explore in what is becoming one of our favorite countries.
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