Hit the ground running!
Trip Start
Nov 21, 2009
1
8
Trip End
Nov 30, 2009
Santiago, Chile
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Chile is two hours ahead of Eastern Time so when we went through immigration (easy breezy) and got in our shuttle, it was about 8:45 a.m. their time and 6:45 to our bodies! We used TransVIP and for about $20 for both of us shared a ride into the city and the Las Condes area where we are spending tonight.
In anticipation of James' inability to sleep on planes, I traded in 10,000 Starpoints for a night at the newly opened W hotel in Santiago. I figured that if he was going to enjoy a nice bed on this trip, it would be on the first night
slippers on the plane
. We're signed up for B&Bs and basic hotels the rest of the week!We had time to kill until our room would be ready and somebody forgot to pack swim trunks and I myself had forgotten to pack socks so we asked the concierge where the nearest mall was. (This is after I convinced James that 14,400 chilean pesos each for the W's swanky breakfast buffet was outrageous...that would have been about $60 total) She showed us on the map and gave me a weird look when I said we would walk it. Come on, we had just been sitting upright for 9 hours, I wanted to stretch my legs! But she showed us the route and off we went after a pit stop at Starbucks. BTW, the coffee is NOT the same. and the muffin was kinda gross and cold. You could tell people there thought they were so trendy, but if only they knew what a legit Starbucks can offer!
Off we went on our 40 minute walk to Parque Arauco, a huge mall. The area is very high end, tall condo buildings and practially no one was out at that time of day, other than doormen and a few runners and bikers. We actually made it there before the mall opened so we shared an empanada and a quiche at a cafe and then hit two big department stores, Paris and Ripley, to purchase the necessary items. Of course today was pretty cloudy and we found out the hotel hasn't even opened the 21st floor rooftop pool yet, but hopefully James will get to don his newly purchased trunks
Sunrise
. We also got him a tie (2 x 9,990 pesos/$20!) just in case for Kimberlyn and Cristian's wedding on Saturday. We don't want to be the classless underdressed Americans ;)The taxi ride back to the W was $5 and 5 minutes. Whatever, I still stand behind my insistence on walking! Our room was ready and we happily showered, changed and took a 20 minute nap before the afternoon's excursion.
We succumbed to convenience and took a taxi to Mercado Central, (on the concierge's top 3 list must sees for our one day in Santiago) which is in El Centro. She told us it was a fish market and it certainly smelled like it but mostly it seemed like a food court with various seafood restaurants side by side, so yeah, you walk around with a tall white guy and each hawker comes up to be like, want to eat lunch with us? We went to El Galeon, also our concierge's recommendation and feasted on reineta calcado (some kind of white fish grilled and then served with melted cheese in a broth with other seafood) and paila especial (a broth based soup with salmon, shrimp, mussels, abalone, and clams). It was very tasty and I didn't object to the two complimentary pisco sours! James couldn't even finish his; there was so much seafood!
We walked to Plaza de Armas, checked out the cathedral and took pictures. Of course I'm translating the tourist map so here's a snippet of most of our conversation:
J - "Wow, what's that building?"
K - " uhhh, number 3, hang on, oh its the national post office."
It wasn't long before we'd had enough and we hopped on the metro to the Bellavista neighborhood where you find a funky young area with bars, tourists and the vendors selling hash pipes on the sidewalk
Andes
. It's the "Decatur" of Santiago. Also this is where la Chascona, the house of writer Pablo Neruda is. At this point James realized what I told him about the scarcity of public restrooms so I took one for the team and ordered a beer at a bar while James took advantage of the facilities as a paying customer. I tried a Kuntsman lager, an Austrian (or maybe German) beer produced here in Chile, in Valdivia. It was very good and James drank coffee and ate chocolate profiteroles. OK maybe I helped him a bit with dessert. We checked out the artisans and walked to the base of Cerro San Cristobal with the virgin over the city. The teleferico (gondola) is out of service currently so we looked up admiringly. I warned him it was quite a hike, (I made this trip with Kimberlyn when I was here in Jan 2007) so we took the metro back to our hotel. (Trip to Centro in taxi ~ $12USD. Trip back from El Centro on metro ~ $4 USD.)After all the walking, we were both ready to take a nap, and that's exactly what we did until about 9 pm tonight. We grabbed a quick dinner right down the street at Piola, a pizza place that has a location in South Beach where James actually used to work! Now we have to rest up for our trip to Puerto Montt tomorrow and make sure J's bag gets below 50 lbs for the intra-Chile flight. Yes that's right, he brought more stuff than I did!!
