What a wonderful day today, wandering around in a city of 6.5 million people (40% of Chile's population) feeling like a medium sized Canadian city. Belleville, perhaps? Okay, so maybe a bit bigger but we are left wondering where 6.5 million are and whether they count the cemeteries. We did one of the hop-on/hop-off tours and only had a few bumps, so to speak. The bus failed to pick us up at our assigned stop, flying right past us and we know it was the right spot as it is where, late this afternoon, it dropped us off. Perhaps we didn't look like "friendlies" but it resulted in us taking a cab to the funicular to go up to San Cristobal. Cab fare 2740 CP. Maggie thought it was 27400 CP and unthinkingly gave the cabbie 30,000 CP and feeling good about rounding it up as tipping isn't necessary here and most people just round up on things like cabs. This means our cab ride might have been 3000 CP at most. Instead, for those of you who don't instantaneously do FX, we paid approx. US$60.00 for our 5 minute cab ride. Life's lessons in a large South American city well learned! When we exited the cab I asked what she'd given him and when she told me we figured it out. The cabbie didn't so much as blink, saying simply "gracias". Indeed!!
We did then have a very interesting ride in the funicular, 10 minutes to the top and this beautiful park that offers a 360 view of the city. Somewhat smoggy today as you will see when I get a picture posted but beautiful, warm, and offering the chance to watch families out for Saturday adventures. Adventurous it was when the funicular slipped its cable on the way down. We paused for enough minutes for it to be of concern, listening to the operators speaking very quickly in Spanish. We could actually see the cable slipped off 4 of the wheels behind us and just hoped it held for the ones on the downside. Since you are reading this, you can assume that we arrived safely, albeit, somewhat less relaxed than we started. At that point we found a beautiful store selling lapis lazuli jewelry which I am sure will surprise all of you :-) and after soothing our troubled psyches there with some shopping therapy we were ready to find a much talked about seafood restaurant at Mercado Centrale. It really does seem that Mercado Centrale's are the same all over the world with the most beautiful displays of fruits and veggies and great restaurants. Santiago's is no exception. We had a great lunch of king crab, shrimp and the Chilean specialty salad of tomato and onions. All very good for approx $25.00 for the two of us. We did find our hopon/hopoff bus and enjoyed riding the upper deck while listening to a well-articulated English guide. We were too pooped to do museums today and tomorrow being Sunday much is closed but we will check out some of the artisanal markets. I did try my first pisco sour tonight, the Chilean national drink, I'm told. Pisco is a brandy made from muscadet grapes and the drink is pisco, lemon juice and sugar. Really very lovely and refreshing. Monday we are doing an Andes & winery tour all day where we will go up into the mountains for the morning and in the afternoon tour the Santa Carolina winery. Right now we are heading out to Mephisto, a Latin American restaurant for dinner. We got an 8:00 reservation, the earliest we could get :-). Working our way up to the 10:00 slots in Buenos Aires. Talk to you all soon! xoxo
What a wonderful day today, wandering around in a city of 6.5 million people (40% of Chile's population) feeling like a medium sized Canadian city. Belleville, perhaps? Okay, so maybe a bit bigger but we are left wondering where 6.5 million are and whether they count the cemeteries. We did one of the hop-on/hop-off tours and only had a few bumps, so to speak. The bus failed to pick us up at our assigned stop, flying right past us and we know it was the right spot as it is where, late this afternoon, it dropped us off. Perhaps we didn't look like "friendlies" but it resulted in us taking a cab to the funicular to go up to San Cristobal. Cab fare 2740 CP. Maggie thought it was 27400 CP and unthinkingly gave the cabbie 30,000 CP and feeling good about rounding it up as tipping isn't necessary here and most people just round up on things like cabs. This means our cab ride might have been 3000 CP at most. Instead, for those of you who don't instantaneously do FX, we paid approx. US$60.00 for our 5 minute cab ride. Life's lessons in a large South American city well learned! When we exited the cab I asked what she'd given him and when she told me we figured it out. The cabbie didn't so much as blink, saying simply "gracias". Indeed!!
We did then have a very interesting ride in the funicular, 10 minutes to the top and this beautiful park that offers a 360 view of the city. Somewhat smoggy today as you will see when I get a picture posted but beautiful, warm, and offering the chance to watch families out for Saturday adventures. Adventurous it was when the funicular slipped its cable on the way down. We paused for enough minutes for it to be of concern, listening to the operators speaking very quickly in Spanish. We could actually see the cable slipped off 4 of the wheels behind us and just hoped it held for the ones on the downside. Since you are reading this, you can assume that we arrived safely, albeit, somewhat less relaxed than we started. At that point we found a beautiful store selling lapis lazuli jewelry which I am sure will surprise all of you :-) and after soothing our troubled psyches there with some shopping therapy we were ready to find a much talked about seafood restaurant at Mercado Centrale. It really does seem that Mercado Centrale's are the same all over the world with the most beautiful displays of fruits and veggies and great restaurants. Santiago's is no exception. We had a great lunch of king crab, shrimp and the Chilean specialty salad of tomato and onions. All very good for approx $25.00 for the two of us. We did find our hopon/hopoff bus and enjoyed riding the upper deck while listening to a well-articulated English guide. We were too pooped to do museums today and tomorrow being Sunday much is closed but we will check out some of the artisanal markets. I did try my first pisco sour tonight, the Chilean national drink, I'm told. Pisco is a brandy made from muscadet grapes and the drink is pisco, lemon juice and sugar. Really very lovely and refreshing. Monday we are doing an Andes & winery tour all day where we will go up into the mountains for the morning and in the afternoon tour the Santa Carolina winery. Right now we are heading out to Mephisto, a Latin American restaurant for dinner. We got an 8:00 reservation, the earliest we could get :-). Working our way up to the 10:00 slots in Buenos Aires. Talk to you all soon! xoxo
Lady and I read your story this morning and we thought that lunch sounded wonderful. Have a tasting at Santa Carolina for us!
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