Tourist First

Travel notes and advice from around the world. Above, the daily flight from Managua at the San Carlos, Nicaragua, airstrip.

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Chile: Stopover in Santiago

     

A fish made of basket-weaving material soars between
the two buildings of the Gabriela Mistral Cultural
Center in Lastarria. Great public art is strewn around
 Santiago, from a Botero horse to extravagant
 murals along narrow streets.

    In some cities, like New York or Rome or Paris, it's easy to be a tourist. All the must-see attractions are well known, they're easy to get to and maps for tourists are readily available. Not so in Santiago, where we stopped over, first for two nights and then for two one-night stops, while traveling around Chile during November and December 2024. Santiago is a large city with few obvious attractions for tourists. Since we don't know anyone who lives there, we could either hire a guide or explore on our own and take our chances, And that's what we did, finding enough to occupy our short time here. We didn't buy Chilean sim cards for our phones so we didn't have GPS while walking around, but we did use Google maps when we had wifi, like at our hotel, and did screen saves of the directions to various places.

   We got to Santiago before 8 a.m. on the 16th of November and spent two nights at Hotel Cumbres in the Lastarria district, which has enough restaurants and shops that we didn't need to look elsewhere. One wine cafe worth mentioning is Bocanariz just around the corner from our hotel. On our first day we walked to Santiago's sprawling Central Market, where we had lunched during a 2006 trip here, but this time we went back to Lastarria to eat. On our one full day here, we walked to the poet Pablo Neruda's La Chascona house, which we visited, and to the funicular railroad, which we rode to the top of San Cristobal for views of the city. We had lunch at a  parrilla (barbecue) place, Parrilladas Bella Vista, on the way back to Lastarria. We had them hold the blood sausages but got everything else (beef, lamb, chicken, other sausages) in a combo plate for two. This is a place to go for quantity if not quality, but it you're in Chile or Argentina, you have to have parrilla at least once. It turned out that this was the first of several parilla meals for us. 

     Our one-night stays were at the airport's Holiday Inn on layovers between flights from and to other parts of Chile. The first time, we arrived late from Rapa Nui and left early the next morning for Calama in the Atacama Desert. The second time we arrived in the morning from Calama and left the next morning for Puerto Natales in Patagonia, which gave us time to take a taxi to Plaza de Armas in downtown Santiago, which we had not visited before. The plaza is a large shady square surrounded by shopping streets and restaurants.  We had a late lunch at an inexpensive chicken restaurant where everyone else seemed to be workers from nearby offices.  Then drinks at the Hotel Plaza San Francisco and back to the Holiday Inn.

Here are some photos.

Santiago as seen after our ride on a funicular railroad to the top of San Christobal hill. The strip 
of green in the mid-distance is the Parque Forestal, that connects our hotel's Lastarria
neighborhood toward the left, with the Central Market at the other end. Neruda's
La Chascona house is at the base of this hill. If it had been a clearer day, and
 apparently is is never clear here, the Andes would have been visible in the distance.













We came across "Caballo," a 1992 sculpture
by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero, a 
short walk from our hotel as we were heading
to Santiago's downtown Central Market.

We came across this mural, on what I take to be a residential building, as we walked 
through the Bellavista neighborhood from our hotel to La Chascona and
the San Cristobal funicular railroad.
















Another mural in Bellavista.










Another Bellavista mural. There was something like this once or twice on almost every block. 












The dining room in Pablo Neruda's home in Santiago.
He called it La Chascona, a reference to Matilde 
Urrutia's thick red hair. She was his mistress when
he started building the house in 1953 and later
became his wife. 

Diego Rivera's 1953 portrait, supposedly
showing the public and private faces
of Matilde Urrutia. 

Our downward-bound funicular railcar will pass the upward-bound car 
where the tracks diverge on San Cristobal hill. The station for the 
railroad is just a few blocks from La Chascona.


























Once the funicular gets you to the top of San Cristobal hill, in addition to great views
of the city below there is a gondola ride along a ridge with more good views and there
is the daredevil bridge, above. We did the gondala but not the bridge. 























We finally got to Plaza de Armas on our last day in Santiago, the last Wednesday in 
November. The plaza seems to be working as designed, providing a shady place
for Santiagoans during the middle of the day. The plaza is only a few blocks 
from the Central Market and within walking distance of Hotel Cumbres
where we stayed when we first arrived. 























Walking the shopping streets around the Plaza de Armas
led us to the Hotel Plaza San Francisco and its excellent
bar. He're we're about to enjoy a beer and a pisco
sout. The Austral beer is made in a town we'll pass
through later on this trip, Punta Arenas, and this 
particular beer is called Torres del Paines, named
for a park that we would be at the next day.

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