Santiago Chile - Feb 17-19 2024

Laura and I are at the start of the trip of a lifetime - a cruise from Santiago Chile to Buenos Aires Argentina, including 3 days cruising along the Antarctic Peninsula! Our ship, the Seven Seas Voyager leaves San Antonio Chile tomorrow on Monday February 19, so we flew in on Saturday to have a day and a half to explore the beautiful city of Santiago.

On Saturday afternoon we explored the El Golf area around our hotel for restaurants and had a Chilean lunch at Ciro's and an amazing Argentine Parilla dinner at La Cabrera ... both on Isidora Goyenechea Street. Looking up Isidora Goyenechea, it would seem she single handedly ran the biggest business empire in Chile in the late 1800's - an amazing feat for those times!

For Thiru and other foodies:

• Ciro's lunch included Abalone Mayo with potato salad, whole avocado with chicken salad, and fries. Somewhat "mayo forward" :-)

• La Cabrera dinner is ribeye steak, roast andean potatoes with carmelized onion, grilled vegetables and eight pots of mouth watering accompaniments. Perfect!

Today, Sunday, we headed into the Bellavista neighborhood to visit Palbo Neruda's house and ride the funicular railway up to the top of the hill in Parque Metropolitano. Well that was the plan anyway ...

We did make it to Palbo Neruda's house and exploring it was fun. The house is more of a mini compound with multiple tiny buildings and multi level gardens with wonderful art everywhere. By the time we walked over to the funicular rail station, it was 1:30pm, hot and humid and there were about 200 people in line to buy tickets. We dont do long lines and we opted not to hike up (what fun is sun stroke?) and took refuge in a wonderful Peruvian restaurant called Selvado for a delicious lunch.

Foodie corner:

• Laura had the Peruvian noodles with stir fried beef, chicken and shrimp, with a lovely Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.

• I had grilled octopus with roast potatoes and red cabbage, washed down with a delightful Cusquena Peruvian lager.

We love Santiago and will definitely return for longer next time. But they might have to roll us out then!