(Sept 28-Oct 1)
Upon arrival in Santiago, we took a taxi from the airport to
the hotel. Our hotel, The Grand Hyatt,
is in the upscale Las Condes district of Santiago which is on the other side of
downtown from the airport. Although a
taxi would be expensive (USD40), taking public transit would require us to take
a coach bus ($2, 20 minutes) to the subway ($1.20, 36 minutes) to a walk ($0,
20 minutes). Taking a taxi also enabled
us to catch the tail end of happy hour in the club lounge.
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| Taxi from the airport – look at the highway in front of us! |
Leaving the airport in the taxi, we were immediately struck
by how modern and functional both the tai and the roads were in Chile. We’re not in Kansas (Peru) anymore! Our 29km taxi ride took under 20 minutes – a
limited-access highway (dual carriageway) the whole way, with an extensive
tunnel beneath downtown. Compare that
with our 45-minute taxi ride to the airport in Lima covering only half the
distance.
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| Grand Hyatt Santiago exterior |
Arriving at the Grand Hyatt, as usual we
fought off declined assistance with our luggage from the bellmen.
We were assigned room 1918, an Executive Suite. We had confirmed a suite in advance using a
suite upgrade given to Hyatt Diamond members.
Our research had told us that the suites at this hotel were on the 2
nd,
3
rd, and 19
th floors, so we were hopeful that our 19
th
floor room would offer nice views.
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The atrium at the Grand Hyatt Santiago reminded us of the atrium at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai
|
The hotel had a dramatic 19-story atrium, reminiscent of the Grand Hyatt Shanghai. Our room was fantastic. Two sets of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the Andes mountains (damn the smog!), a desk and sitting area in the living room, and separate bedroom with a king bed looking out at the mountains, a large bathroom, and one of the biggest whirlpool bathtubs I’ve ever seen.
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| Hotel Room entrance – we’re in the Strauss suite. It’s a good sign when your suite has a name. |
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| Suite living room |
We dropped off our stuff and headed down to the Grand Club
on the 16th floor for drinks and appetizers. Sparkling wine was on offer which was our
first choice, followed by red wine with our selection of hot and cold
munchies. This would suffice for dinner
after our late lunch on the flight from Lima to Santiago.
Our goals for our first day in Santiago were the following:
(1) Take the free walking tour around downtown. (2) Buy tickets for our bus
trip to Mendoza. (3) Get cash (Chilean Pesos) from an ATM and (4) decide of we
want to take a side-trip to the town of Valpariso on Chile’s west coast. Being frugal as we are on our extended trip, we
embarked on the 20-minute walk to the Metro to take public transit
downtown. Conveniently there was a
BancoEstado (“State Bank”) right at our Metro stop (Manquehue), and BancoEstado
is one of the two Chilean banks that doesn’t charge foreigh ATM holders for
withdrawals. Unfortunately the ATM was only in Spanish. Fortunately we were able to use our iPhones
(and our international data roaming package) to translate some key words like
“checking account” (which looked more like “current account” in Spanish). Down in the Metro station, we again needed to
resort to the iPhone (this time the Lonely Planet Offline Spanish Translator
app) to ask to purchase Bip Cards (pronounced “beep cards”, stored value
transit cards) to take the Metro.
The next walking tour was not until 2:00 PM, so we decided
to walk around ourselves to the Plaza De Armas (the central square, named so in
all Spanish-settled cities it seems). We
attempted to find the tourist office to inquire about bus tickets (Lonely
Planet, you definitely labeled it in the wrong place…). We did find a glasses store to pick up a
replacement glasses case for C (he
left his on the Plane from JFK-LIM, fortunately without the prescription
glasses inside). Approximately 10% of
the stores in downtown Santiago are shoe stores. There were dozens.
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| Shoe stores were everywhere in Santiago |
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| and a shoe store |
Along the Plaza de Armas itself we found the tourist
office. The staffer inside, who did
speak English (although limited) was surprisingly not helpful to book bus
tickets. The office did, however, have
Intenet access and we were able to book our ticket ourselves online with the
bus company Andesmar.
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| Stray dogs in Santiago are plentiful, and they seem to enjoy sleeping in the middle of activity in public. |
Around the Plaza de Armas was a lot of activity, both tourist
and locals, and also a lot of sleeping dogs.
We had lunch at a traditional Chilean restaurant Bar Nacional. We each
had a sandwich, one a steak sandwich with no toppings (yummy), and one a chicken
sandwich “complete” – with goopy avocado, lots of mayo, lettuce and
tomato. Needless to say a complete
mess. But very tasty.
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| Lunch at Bar Nacional |
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Chicken sandwich complete.
|
Finally 2:00 rolled around and we found the starting point
for the walking tour. Our guide was
Antonio, and 20-something Santiago resident who spoke good English and had good
knowledge of the city. The walking tour was to be 4 hours(!), far more
comprehensive than we expected. The tour
offered us a crash course on the downtown are of Santiago, as well as several
interesting glimpses into Chilean culture from the 25-year-old local. Santiago, as it turned out, had much more to
offer than we originally expected and we would happily return for another
visit. Below are several pictures from
the walking tour.
Finally we took the subway back to the hotel and crashed.
On our second day in Santiago we had originally planned to
take a 90 minute bus trip to the cute coastal town of Valparaiso. Waking up on the second day, however, we
decided that we would rather just relax in our spectacular suite at the Grand
Hyatt Santiago, explore the Las Condes area around our hotel, and possibly try
out the gigantic whirlpool tub in our room.
Breakfast in the Grand Club consisted of a cold buffet with
plenty of yummy options. The cappuccino
was delightful, and the smoked salmon was plentiful. Next up on the agenda was work on the
blog. If any of you readers ever write
a travel blog like this, you’ll realize what a surprisingly large amount of
work it is. Really—it’s just like having
homework, except, with the potential benefit of providing a fantastic look back
in time later in life.
Once we were blogged-out, we walked over to the nearby
shopping mall to find lunch. At the mall
there was a multi-level, outdoor restaurant area the reminded us a lot of
southern California, complete with such favorites as Tony Roma’s Steakhouse,
TGI Fridays, and PF Chang’s . There was
also Tanta, a Peruvian restaurant (that we’ve eaten at in Lima), and the place
we selected, an Asian-Chilean fusion restaurant called Madam Tusan.
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| Outdoor restaurant area. Doesn’t it feel American here? |
The weather was nice so we chose to eat outside. Immediately after sitting down the sky
clouded up, the wind freshened, and the true impact of the 60-degree
temperature was felt. It was cold, and
we hadn't brought jackets. We ordered a
crispy Asian noodle dish and Lomo Saltado fajitas (an upsell by the waiter – a
traditional Peruvian dish served in Mexican style in a Chilean restaurant – we
said fusion, right?). After we ordered
it was 1h15 minutes before our food came.
Hardly any attention and definitely no apology from the wait staff. And don’t forget we were freezing. And nursing our cans of soda hoping not to
have to order a second one. A Chilean
family at the table next to us was similarly incensed by the cold and
slow. They appeared to be able to voice
their concerns to a manager in Spanish.
We were not so able, although C
did painstakingly type paragraph into Google Translate on the iPhone attempting
to plead for mercy. Near the end of time
the food came, and it was delicious. It
may have been a $50 lunch, but at least it was tasty. At the end of the meal, after some gruff
non-verbal communication with the waiter (including pointing at our watches,
and moving our index finger 1 ¼ times around indicating 1h15m, the waiter
returned to offer free desserts. Which
were also excellent. Still he seemed
disappointed that we weren't eager to offer a tip at the conclusion of the
meal.
The saving grace of the lunch-from-hell (as we called it) is
that it took so long and we ate so late that we were able to again make dinner
out of the hour d’oeuvres at the Grand Club at the Hyatt. We have mixed feelings about spending so many
meals in the hotel lounge. On one hand
it’s fantastic on such a long trip to be able to find 1.75 free meals each day
(breakfast and maybe dinner). On the
other hand, eating dinner in local restaurants is a fantastic way to immerse
oneself in the local culture.
Fortunately we’re still young enough that we can count on returning to
each of our destinations later in life, so we’ll have another shot at Chilean
culture.
Back at the hotel we took a spin through the pool area. The Grand Hyatt Santiago has a resort-like
pool area; unfortunately it was too cold during our visit to use the pool.
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| Pool at the Grand Hyatt Santiago |
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| It was a shame it was too cold to use the resort-like pool |
Next was the whirlpool tub experience
(requiring a bit of ingenuity to open the air vents to enable to bubbles).
After a delightful evening in the lounge, we retired to our suite to enjoy the
bottle of wine provided to us as a welcome gift by the hotel. Finally we packed up our stuff for our
departure to Mendoza the following day.
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