Awesome Experiences
1. El Cuadro Winery: I dedicated an entire post to this experience. I may have mentioned something about a carving...
2. Bocanariz: My top two experiences are oriented around wine...Well, I'm in a country that has a climate conducive to making wine. What did you expect me to enjoy the most?
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| House Carmenere (big glasses) and a Carmenere flight (smaller glasses) |
And this was dessert--lemon pie.
And they had this awesome sign...I was actually only at the happy level...
I wish I could be more eloquent, but some things are more experiential and cannot be captured in text.
3. Skiing: It also has a post of it's own. Skiing in July...
4. Boat Ride: #7 in this post
5. Tiramasu: This was a stylish pizza restaurant near Garv and LG's place that is very popular--especially among women...Garv, LG, and I arrived at about 9:00 pm and there was an hour wait so we went next door and had some wine. We were seated at 10:00 and had a bottle of wine and we each had a pizza. Once, again...see the last sentence of #1.
6. National History Museum: there's a paragraph about it in this post. This probably wouldn't be as high on other people's list, but it's my list...
7. The Coast: #5 and #6 in this post. Living in the Midwest, there's always something alluring about the ocean.
8. Memory Museum: See this post. Chile had a dictatorship from 1973-1990. Garv and LG would not have gone to live there then...
9. Da Dino: the last picture in this post. We ate at Da Dino one of my first nights in Chile and then we ordered some carry-out after skiing. So much greasy goodness.
10. "Good Morning, Santiago!" walking tour: described in this post. If you travel to Chile, Garv and LG will take you on this tour.
11. Valparaiso: #8 in this post. At the time, I don't think I appreciated the uniqueness of Valparaiso enough. It's geographic composition (constructed up hills) is extremely unique and off the top of my head, only Manhattan (NY, not KS), Venice, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Singapore are more unique. The reason Valparaiso isn't as well known is that it's only 800,000 and is no where near as influential as those other cities.
12. Daily Schedule: During the weekdays, LG and I had a pretty standard schedule. Wake up at 9:00. Leave for the metro at 9:30. Tour or museum at 10:00. Lunch at 2:00. Nap, lounge in the sun, or work out in the late afternoon. Go out at 8:00. Eat at 9:00. Bedtime at 1:00 am (probably 11:00 pm for LG). It's the perfect schedule for me. I wish we did this in the US.
13. Sur Patagonia: described in this post. I ate wild llama...
14. Mexican food: In high school, Garv and I were part of a Spanish class trip to Mexico. One of the things that we both vividly remember is eating "pig off a board" in some small town. The guy literally had a pig on a board and cut off the meat and put it in a tortilla. It was so good. Garv and Diego had found a Mexican restaurant in which they cut meat off a stick. It was also awesome. Sorry no pics...
15. Cerro San Cristobal Hike #1: This was the first thing I did in Chile. I was introduced to "Santiago's dogs." Though we only went a third or half of the way up, it was a great way to stretch out my legs after being crammed into a plane.
16. Fuente Alemana: The first place I ate at in Chile. It was the perfect food after a long day of travel.
17. Earthquake! #10 in this post. I really debated where to put this. I thought about putting it in the top 5...or the bottom 5. But I probably shouldn't tempt Mother Gaia or whatever the hell personification of the natural world would be most appropriate. So I put it in the middle.
18. Cerro San Cristobal #2: Since we didn't reach the top the first time, LG and I walked to the top a second time. I call it a walk, and not a hike, because we walked up a paved road. At the top is a church, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and some food stands. I brought "Lindquist Herky" to the top because the University of Iowa College of Education is having a contest for most unique picture or something corny like that. Normally I don't do crap like this, but I thought that two alums of the UI College of Ed with Lindquist Herky would be a good candidate to win. So here's the pic:
Here's some other pics from up top:
Finally, here we are having a mote con huesillo which is a peach, peach juice, and barley or wheat. It's the non-alcoholic national drink. It was okay.
19. The first Saturday night in Santiago: see this post. I can't think of anything significant to add.
20. Church: On the first Sunday night, we went to Church. Chile is a very Catholic country and it was packed. Mass is in Spanish but there are parts I could follow because it's not like there's that much variety in a Catholic mass. The sermon, of course, I could not follow. Garv and LG like church there because it helps them measure their progress in understanding spoken Spanish (which is MUCH harder than reading Spanish--I could read a lot of it but I rarely understood anything spoken). Communion was hilarious. There was no system and people went whenever they wanted. People ran into each other to get to communion and get back to their pew. We, of course, waited until the end. But I couldn't stop laughing at the lack of a system and Garv's reaction to the lack of a system.
21. Cirkopolis: On July 17, LG, Garv, and I went to Cirkopolis at the Teatro Municipal de Las Condes, which is about a five minute walk from their aparment. Cirkopolis is an acrobatic show somewhat like a Cirque de Soleil show. It was almost all action and very little speaking so we could understand it. That, however, was not the most entertaining element of the show.
Since we purchased tickets a few days before the show, we could only get singles and had to sit separately. As it turned out, Garv was in a balcony...I was in the fourth row dead center!...and LG was in the front row! Or so we thought. About five minutes before show, someone showed up with a ticket for my seat. I didn't have my ticket because for some strange reason, the usher takes your ticket when you're seated (it's Chile, so don't ask). So I go over to LG and tell her we had a problem. So we rush up to the usher. She tries to help us, but realizes they'd sold two tickets to the same seat. In the meantime, someone else sits in LG's seat! Obviously, the online system and ticket office weren't aligned...Chileans are not fond of efficient systems. Alas, amazingly, the "jefe" somehow knows that there are two open seats in the twenty-fifth row so LG and I sat together.
22. Cerro Santa Lucia: This is the smaller of two hills in Santiago and is in the heart of downtown. Geographically, Santiago is hemmed in between two mountain ranges and it's a city of six million. Thus, smog is a huge problem. Since I'd arrived Chileans had told me I needed to wait until after it rained because the views would be amazing. So the day after it rained, LG and I walked to the top of Cerro Santa Lucia and had this view:
23. The Fault in Our Stars: Garv and LG had wanted to see it so we did. It was in English with Spanish subtitles so it wasn't a problem watching it. John Green can write. His interpretations of history, however, are not as good as his writing for young adults. (Those last two sentences are strictly for the purpose of my history classes.)
24. Pre-Columbian Museum: See the Tuesday, July 8 part of this post.
25. Germany vs Brazil
26. Netherlands vs Argentina
See this post for both of the above. I was hoping these two would be higher. I thought it would be better watching soccer in South America. But then, I forgot, that soccer is boring. I know there are lots of people on the soccer band wagon, but baseball has devoured all of my boring sport quota.
27. The Mall: Chile has awesome malls. I didn't buy anything because everything is more expensive in Chile except wine or beer. It's a lightly populated country a significant distance away so that's why everything is so expensive.
28. Karaoke: See #11 in this post.
29. Market Tour
30. Patrimonial Tour
The company that does the "Good Morning, Santiago!" tour, Spicy Chile, has two other walking tours. The first one was a tour of the markets. They're permanent farmers' markets where you can buy fish, meat, spices, vegetables, fruits, froot loops (yes, they have giant barrels of cereal), and paper products. It's the grocery store. Though they have regular grocery stores, too. We probably didn't need a tour guide. But I did have the obligatory Coke made with sugar rather than corn syrup.
For the Patrimonial Tour, we needed a guide, but he or she didn't show up. We followed the route on the map but we needed narration to understand the significance of where we were.
31. Santiago Public Library, National Library, National Archives
There wasn't anything very substantive here (at least in English) except this awesome map of the Americas in the 1860s. But LG and I did take these pics outside the Santiago Library. And I had eXpresso at lunch:
32. Fine Arts Museum
33. Moneda Cultural Center
DO NOT let post-modernists get a hold of anything or they'll fuck it up. See the July 9 portion of this post.
34. Hotel Adventure: See #3 and #4 in this post. Do a Google search of the town you're planning on staying in. And reserve a room before leaving on the trip.
FINAL (or not so final) THOUGHTS
Iowa is an awesome state. When I was at Ole Miss I was the biggest homer ever. Many Iowans are proud of their state. Non-Iowans are either misinformed (Do you drive your tractor to work? har har har. Is that where they grow potatoes? uh duh) or ignorant about Iowa. Iowans, therefore, are very eager to show off their state and have outsiders see what we love about Iowa (that's one of the reasons Iowans love RAGBRAI). Iowans want Texans, New Yorkers, Californians, Massachusettsians, Connecticutians, etc to regard Iowa positively. So Iowans bombard them with the question "What do you think of Iowa?"
In Chile, the same phenomenon is in operation. Chileans are very proud of their country, which they think is great, but others are often misinformed or ignorant of it. They want to show it off, especially to Americans. So I was asked frequently "What do you think of Chile?" The answer to both of those questions is somewhat hard for the outsider to answer. They're both great, but it's hard to articulate the justification for that answer. Is Chile as incredible as Italy or France? No. Is Iowa as incredible as New York or California? No. Both Iowa and Chile, however, have a simplicity to them that is incredibly appealing, especially if someone is looking for simplicity in their daily lives. After moving back from Mississippi, my observation about Iowa was that it was easy to live there. I think the same can be said about Chile. Though that may not wow the outsider, over time, it makes both places great, especially for the people from there.
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