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We have had a full day, back in the room for the moment, well for the night, we just decided that once again we are not hungry enough for a full meal, so we will forgo getting dressed for dinner, dealing with the metro there and back when we aren’t really hungry for a nice dinner. That seems to be happing a lot this trip, could be metabolism changing as we get older, we are eating to much at lunch (which really isn’t the case) but for whatever reason we have cancelled a lot of dinners. Trust me we are not going hungry but are saving money. On top of that, I am exhausted and we have a drive to the coast tomorrow. So why not enjoy this very nice room we have?
Back to our whirlwind around Santiago.
The day of course started with breakfast, pretty decent, they have good baguettes so it can be to bad. They also have the omelet station; they truly love their omelets here in South America. Beyond that it is the standard fair, with the exception of the sopaipilla pancakes and actual low sugar yogurt.
After breakfast it was off to
the HoHo. The original plan was to take the metro to get as close as we could and then walk the rest of the way. We were running behind so we changed to an Uber, yes I was forced to download the Uber app, because taxi’s are so unreliable here. I ordered the Uber, then the bellman said they have a taxi service on sight, so I canceled the Uber and we opted for their service. A bit more expensive, but the experience was well worth the extra cost.
Senorita Claudia Our driver was quite the character. She is about 50ish and insists on being called Senorita instead of Senora, she is clearly not a under 20. The bellman told her where we were going, and then Jerry gave her what he thought was the correct address. She knew where to go, but used the address given. This caused us to loose about 30 minutes of the day, as we were in totally the wrong place. Should have just relied on the locals as I am pretty sure they know where to go.
The drive there was quite interesting, she spoke into her translator app the entire
way, she was very funny but the driving was a bit scary. Turns out she informed us that everyone in Chile is a horrible driver, maybe they are all related to Rhode Islanders. They apparently do not pay attention to your blinkers, so she pulls out this bright green hat and waives it out the window when ever she wanted to merge lanes.
After mis turn after mis turn, we finally arrived at the HoHo stop 1. It was a very crips fall day and I even put on a coat, have a bit of a stuffy nose at the moment, but I am sure it will be gone after a good night’s sleep.
In the end, it was a good thing we didn’t take the metro, we would never have found the HoHo place and walked way to many extra miles.
A bit of digression. The hotel was kind enough and smart enough to have a metro card on hand so we did not have to buy one, we just needed to charge it up. This is something all hotels should do in any city that has a metro system. It is a huge time savings
and convenience for the guests. While I am digressing, a bit about the airport. When you go through immigration, they not only stamp your passport (yea first stamp in brand new passport) they also stamp what looks like a receipt. We had no idea what it was, until the hotel told us it was our visa to be in the country, and we would need it to get out of the country. I wonder how many people of just thrown it away.
HoHo This is the first time we actually used the HoHo as a way to get from sight to sight. Typically, we use it just to get a since of a new city. Here we used to get from sight to sight that were otherwise pretty far apart. It starts in the far east section of Santiago, miles from our hotel and other sights. While you ride along you get some Chilean history and information about the city. Our first stop of the day was stop number 3. At the base of San Cristobal Hill in the Metropolitan Park, (allegedly the largest urban park in the world.) I might have to disagree with that because Forest
Park in Portland, Oregon seems much bigger.
Stop 3 is where you get on the Teleforico (gondola) that takes you to the top of the hill. At the top is a very large statue of the Virgin Marry, arms spread out over Santiago below. The views of the city below and the Andes are spectacular, It would be more spectacular if there was less smog, yet another man-made nuisance.
To get down the hill we took the Funicular. This brought us to lunch time. Somehow we managed to get back on schedule after the transportation error earlier.
Lunch was at El Meson, a very cute restaurant in a former house of a famous poet, I don’t remember the poet’s name. We were a bit early, but they sat us anyway. There was very little English spoken but, and I say this very grudgingly, the menu being on a QR code was helpful because it was also in English.
We started with a tuna ceviche (also had shrimp, white fish, avocado, cilantro, garlic and cucumber. It was pretty good, not as good as yesterday, but pretty good. What was fantastic was the fresh from the fryer sopapillas,
Sopapillas
Dish of the Daynothing like what you get in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but oh so delicious, they were like crack. The two sauces were also good, a spicy chili sauce and what they called a mayonnaise, but clearly wasn’t or Jerry would not have eaten it. It was like horseradish but not, it was good and had a slight kick. I guess the Chilean’s do like spice, unlike the Argentine’s.
For our mains, Jerry had Costillar a horno (ribs) in a pretty decent sauce over a really nice potato puree, there was garlic in them potatoes. I had a Chilean standard Cancato. Fishe stuffed with onions, rep peppers, garlic, tomatoes and spices (they aren’t telling which spices.) It was good, the first couple of bites were a bit fishy, but then once it all melded, especially with the crispy potatoes, it tasted very good. A couple of glasses of Sauvignon Blanc and we had an excellent lunch. I think the fish was sea bass, but not 100% on that.
After lunch it was back to the HoHo, the next place to get on was 4 blocks from the restaurant. Here is the scoop on the HoHo, Teleforico and funicular, they
are all owned and operated by the same company, so they have the market on some of the top sights.
HoHo Tip, unlike every other HoHo we have ever been on, this one has no marked stops were you can actually hop on or hop off. You have to basically guess, but the map you are given. Fortunately, it was easy for us to figure out the only place we Hopped On. If you were to start your ride somewhere in the middle of the route, I am not sure you could figure out where to actually get on.
We only rode the HoHo until the next stop Plaza de Armas, where we ended our HoHo day. The rest of the day would be walking as we were now back in the Historic Center of Santiago. Most of the rest of the day was what we call a walk by, snap a photo off to the next place. People watching while Jerry took the pictures was also fun.
Plaza de Armas is surrounded by several historical buildings including the cathedral. So far we have not gone into a single cathedral. We are pretty much cathedraled out, they all
start to look the same. Our general rule now is that it has to have something of historical significance, such as the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. On one side of the plaza is the Colonial-era Palacio de la Real Audiencia which now serves as the Museo Historico Nacional; Municipalidad de Santiago former city hall; and Correo Central former post office. The Metropolitan Cathedral takes up an entire side of the plaza.
A short walk off the plaza is the Museo Chileno de arte Pre-colombino. This we did go in and spend about 90 minutes. It is pretty much a complete history of the people of Central and South America prior to contact with European. It is called pre-Colombian, all because of the evil Christopher Columbus. Most of the other buildings you could enter for free, this did cost 10,000 pesos each, but well worth it.
After the museum we walked the pedestrian only streets back to our hotel. After dumping off our coats, camera’s etc. we went down to the bar to try a pisco sour. The front desk manager gave us a coupon for two free drinks yesterday after we told him how much
we enjoyed our Pisco tasting. The drink was pretty tasty and could be dangerous because you don’t realize your drinking a very strong distilled wine.
Dinner was also at the bar, since we had already decided not to venture out tonight. We each had a very interesting salad, which Jerry hated, but I liked. It was a mix of greens, cilantro, hearts of palm, tomatoes, with a balsamic vinaigrette. Jerry then had some cheese empanada and I had a Barros Luco, a sandwich with very thinly sliced veal and melted cheese, it was very good.
Nothing we had for dinner was going to rise to dish of the day, but what did was the sapodillas we had at lunch. While at dinner we had a nice conversation with the bartender, she was very nice and recommended a great wine for us to have with dinner. The conversation was in Spanish and English on both of our parts, but we managed to actually communicate.
That ends our one day in Santiago. Tomorrow we are off to the coast and a wine tasting in the Casablanca Valley on the way back into Santiago.
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