A Birthday in Santiago!

First of all, thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes!  When I reflected upon all the birthday greetings, I was humbled that I received well-wishes from all stops of my life--family, Remsen, RU, University of Iowa, IKM, Ole Miss, ELC, Boji, SMSU, and many places in between and far away.  Many people wished me a great day and it was!  So I decided to write about it because I had such an enjoyable day with LG and Garv.   And don't worry, I'll still be writing more about Buenos Aires tomorrow.

So here's my day.

9:30 am: Wake up.  I wake up at 9:30 most days here.  The sun doesn't come up until 8:30 anyways.

10:00 am:  Walking tour of Nunoa, a comuna (mini-municipality) of Santiago

One of the many reasons I was excited to visit Santiago for a second time was that I would be able to see parts of the city that are not necessarily remarkable to tourists.  Nunoa is certainly not remarkable to tourists, but it is my new favorite part of the city.

LG and I visited Nunoa because there was a self-guided walking tour with six stops, and it is the part of town where LG volunteers in the schools, so she wanted me to see her schools.  The first stop was the National Stadium.  The National Stadium has some interesting history since it was a detention center during the dictatorship.  Because of that, 300 seats remain unoccupied in memory of the victims during each soccer match, including Chile's victory there in the Copa America in July.  We were only able to see the exterior the stadium so I snapped a few pictures.  I found the playground interesting because someone is missing out on a lot of parking revenue.  There's no way a stadium in the United States would have largely unused playground where expensive parking spots could otherwise be.  When I mentioned this to Garv, he laughed and said that "Financial transactions are the farthest thing from [Chileans'] mind.  It's just different."

Lots of lost revenue!

Showing off my pipes with an imitation of some random Greek statue.

The major reason I liked Nunoa so much is because of the area around Plaza Nunoa, the last stop on the walking tour.  It was an upper middle class neighborhood; had lots of restaurants, bars, and shops; it was very clean and orderly; and it wasn't at all touristy.  I especially love the picture below--the mountains, the apartment building, the church with unique architecture, and the palm tree--because I'm clearly in a foreign country.

4:30 pm: Nap

5:30 pm: Work out

Santiago has lots of parks and many of them are located in the middle of boulevards.  They have crushed gravel paths for jogging and walking and playgrounds and workout equipment in the grassy areas.  So I jogged a mile and a half or so (the perfect distance!) and then did some pushups, pullups, and abs.  But I didn't work out too much because I knew I'd be doing a little (or a lot of) drinking later.

8:30 pm: CHPE Libre

For an aperitif and appetizer, we went to CHPE Libre, a pisco bar and restaurant in a trendy part of Santiago called Lastarria.  This is one of the most brilliantly conceived restaurant/bars ever.  Pisco is a liquor made from grapes and these grapes grow particularly well in northern Chile and southern Peru.  So the CHPE part of the name is derived from the first two letters of each countries' name and they called it the Independent Republic of Pisco.  That's not what was brilliant!  What was really brilliant was that they appropriated communist symbols as a marketing aspect of a capitalist enterprise.  That's the perfect place for me on my birthday.  Pure brilliance.

I love places with maps!

A new country!

Power to cocktails for the bourgeoisie!

The food and drink was excellent, too.  We each ordered a different a different pisco drink and some ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon juice), flanked by two different kinds of corn.  It was an excellent start to my birthday evening.

Ceviche

Another picture of me with a drink...

9:30 pm: Bocanariz

Last year, I ranked Bocanariz as my second favorite experience.  Here was a conversation LG and I had about my birthday plans:

LG: What do you want to do for your birthday?
TK: Go to Bocanariz.
LG: But I wanted to go to Bocanariz one day for lunch.
TK: It's my birthday!

Needless to say, the birthday boy won.

We had reservations at 9:30 and since CHPE Libre was right next door to Bocanariz, we were right on time.  Which, in Chile, means we were way early.  Since we were early, the host let us go down to their cellar which had thousands of wines, all of which were from Chile (which also makes Bocanariz a brilliantly conceived restaurant).  We (or mainly Garv) peppered the host with questions about wine and he even dug out an expensive one for us to look at (and take a picture with).

I was really nervous about dropping this bottle even though the floor was crushed gravel...

Once we were seated, I thoroughly analyzed the place mat that had a map of central Chile on it.  Since Chile is such a long country, only part of it fit on a place mat.  When you put three place mats together, it would have been most of Chile.  But I didn't go that far.

In between map gazing, we also looked through the wine menu which is extensive.  One of my favorite things about Bocanariz is that it is all Chilean wine.  I really don't know that much about Chilean wine (I just drink it), but Garv knows a fair amount and he splurged on a bottle since it was my birthday.  It was very good and, of course, we got a picture of me drinking it.  We also ordered three small plates and a dessert and all of them were excellent.

And another picture of me drinking wine--with a plate of hams from various animals... 

 I also love Bocanariz because this is the greatest thing ever for a wine bar/restaurant...

We only had one bottle...

 Once again, thanks to everyone for the birthday notes.  And thanks to LG and Garv for sharing it with me in Santiago!