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During our stay in Valporaiso we decided to checkout the next-door city of Viña del Mar, a favoured holiday spot for Chileños and a piece of prime real estate along the coast.
Valpo and Viña are pretty much contiguous and it's hard to see by looking at a map where one ends and another begins. Travelling through, the difference is certainly noticeable as you pass from the charismatic disorder of Valpo to the manicured, palm groves of Viña.
Valpo and Viña are connected by one of the fews bits of railroad in South America, which hosts the frequent and reliable Merval (MEtro Regional de VALparaiso) service with trains from Valpo to Viña and beyond. It is also one of the few things we've found in Chile, to be reasonably priced. For that reason, we chose to take a day trip to the trendy beach resort of Viña to see its landscaped splendour and moneyed inhabitants.
At first glance, the town appears to be a bit French Riviera or Costa Del Sol - some high rise, swanky hotels line the sea-front (all the usual suspects are there Sheraton, Best Western etc), lots of (in fact too many) restaurants litter
the town, the beach is white and combed and people can be seen frolicking in the waves and playing volleyball in the sand. Beyond the beach resort elements, it does however, have a bit of culture being home to some elegant century-old mansions, museums, the national botanical gardens and "Quinta Vergara", a stunning park containing the Venetian-style "Palacio Vergara" once home to a prominent Portuguese businessman. The park is also home to a giant amphitheater which is the location for South America's equivalent of the Eurovision song contest. We stood in the spectacular structure and knocked out our best impersonations of Katrina & the Waves and other such Eurovision legends before heading down to the more brash seafront in the Northern part of the city, where we could get a good look at the Pacific Ocean lapping up to Viña's shores.
After witnessing an incredible pink sunset, enhanced by a wispy feather bed of clouds and the sparkling ocean, we jumped back on the Merval to Valpo, our day trip at an end.
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