Tiff & Jared's adventures

For context: it was snowing when we left Denver. When we arrived in Santiago, it was in the 80s!

February 12th

Coming off of a 24-hour travel day, we finally landed in Santiago around 8AM the morning of February 12th. We’d coordinated a shuttle pickup with our hotel ahead of time (Castillo Rojo) and had a seamless drive into the city. Our hotel was in the Bellavista neighborhood, definitely a trendy area with a bunch of restaurants. We very luckily were able to check into our room around 10AM – after dropping our stuff off and freshening up, we grabbed a quick coffee and were off to explore the city!

Our free walking tour began at 11AM and we met at La Iglesia de San Francisco for our 2.5 hour walking tour. On the tour, there were singles and couples from all over the world, many of which were traveling across various countries and continents for multiple months – how cool and jealous was I! We chatted with an English lady going to New Zealand, as well as a couple from Wellington, New Zealand.

The first stop on the tour was the Nueva York area, or the old financial district. We walked through many parts of the old city, including the presidential palace, Plaza de Armas, and various museums. On the walk, we learned about the political climate in the 60s/70s, including the Pinochet Coup as well as the subsequent rise in democracy.

We also learned a lot about the gastronomy of the city, including what were must-eats in the city (pastel de choclo, completo hot dog, congrio stew). At the end of the tour, we ended in an area with a bunch of restaurants, and we ended up going to Chipe Libre – República Independiente del Pisco for lunch (thus began our love affair with pisco sours). After lunch, we walked back to the neighborhood of Bellavista and grabbed a quick coffee to fuel us, went to a brewery called Krossbar and and then walked over to our restaurant reservation at 5 PM at Peumayén.

This restaurant was a super cool experience highlighting indigenous foods of the area (“the best of Mapuche, Aymara and Rapa Nui gastronomic cultural inspiration, among others”). We did the Origins Tasting Menu, which included 19 different courses/preparations. When selecting this menu, you get to choose between meat, seafood, mixed or vegetarian – we got one each of meat and seafood so we could share and try both offerings. The meal started with a beautiful flight of various “breads”, including samples made of pumpkin and oats with honey. We then got our respective meat and seafood boards (meat one included croquette-like item with onion jam, and chochocas filled with meats), and the seafood one included chochoca with creamy cuttlefish and gratin cheese, and a smoked shellfish. We also got a flight of three tasty desserts including a citrus-y tart and creamy custard dessert.

After finishing our 19-course dinner, we walked a few minutes back to the hotel and got ready for bed as we had another early flight in the morning to San Pedro de Atacama.

Pages: 1 2