05-08/09/24

The perfect spring weather continued into Santiago. Another lovely Chilean city, this didn’t feel too dissimilar to London. There were some nice areas walkable from our hostel, parks, galleries etc. So we continued on with our programme of gentle pottering and seeing some sights (or sites?) at a gentle pace.

Our hostel was impossible to find. No sign, no marks, no indication at all that it was a hostel. There was another family with suitcases also desperately searching for an entrance. I found an inconspicuous doorbell and gave it a go; a youth then answered and confirmed we were in the right place, before resolutely shutting the door on the other poor family who were also trying to check in; they hadn’t spotted the doorbell. I said “I think they’re checking in too.” A few times before he opened the door again.

This place was bizarre. It looked like an old stately home or an art gallery. Huge entrance hall, high ceilings, an air of faded grandeur pervaded throughout. Our room was enormous and I spent a lot of my time imagining how I would redesign it as a studio flat with a mezzanine sleeping platform. It would have been amazing. Very “main character energy” in a tv show. Not entirely sure the sheets were clean as there seemed to be crumbs but at this point I’ve slept in worse. There was also absolutely no sound proofing and things on the street outside sounded extraordinarily loud; thank goodness for earplugs. Views were nice though.

The first evening we had a quick dinner at a place that did “lomitos”. Basically a pork sandwich, in this instance it was a juicy pulled pork with some melted cheese. Delicious. I gobbled it up before taking a photo.

Our first full day of wandering started with breakfast in a nice cafe whilst we waited for the laundrette to open. I had a fantastic sandwich and a very silly coffee with lotsa cream and dulce de leche.

After dropping our manky washing at the laundrette our stroll took us through the town, into a massive and imposing cathedral, and then onto a park and an art gallery. Turns out I was really rubbish at taking photos in Santiago, as I have none of the cathedral and few of anywhere else.

The park was nice, although I imagine it was nicer before the main bypass road was chucked through the middle of it, carving it up into small sections. Still, nice wandering on a spring day. We then went to an art gallery that was being renovated and looked at various arts. These were my favourite as they’re both completely unhinged in different ways.

We then went to a big hill called Santa Lucia that had a castle thingy on top and some lovely gardens. I went mad and got a melon slushie. Very nice it was too.

By this point we had done rather a lot of walking and me old hips were starting to ache. We headed back via laundry collection and a supermarket haul. I got some pickles and that was my dinner.

The next day we went for lunch at a recommended place that did a different style of lomito sandwich. These things were vast and smothered in what was apparently homemade mayonnaise… didn’t taste like it. I went for “Italiano” that had avo and tomato and Alex went for a classic which had tomato sauce and sauerkraut. Both had infeasible amounts of mayo on them that I had to scrape off. All was washed down with a nice cold lager.

Not gonna lie, felt pretty rough after this sandwich, which sort of cut our day short. We wandered past what purported to be Chile’s national wine festival and didn’t attend. Serious stuff. We went to the other big hill with the idea of getting the cable car up and walking down through the botanical gardens, but after making it to the top it was clear I wasn’t going to be able to walk all the way back down, so after looking at views and chilling for a bit we got the funicular back down.

We then got the tube back to the hostel and didn’t do much for the rest of the evening. We eventually went to the supermarket for some dinner bits and bus snacks for the following day’s 8 hour drive to Mendoza. Dinner was a pot noodle which stayed where it was meant to, thankfully!

In summary: a nice walkable city, a diet of sandwiches and pot noodles and bedroom wine, possible food poisoning again and embarrassingly few photos. Oh, but I did get a nice one of Alex, finally. It’s all about catching him unawares!