Santiago - Bellavista & San Cristobal

Bellavista is the bohemian area of Santiago, with a lot of colorful artsy building fronts, young crowd taking over a respectable number of terasses, bars and clubs, extremely lively and proximity to some of the universities fuels up a fresh and dynamic feeling about the area. At the end of

 

Pio Nono street

you’ll find the funicular that goes up to the best spot for admiring a 360 degrees panorama of the city surrounded by theAndes.

Dinner & Live Music @ Meson Nerudiana in Bellavista (Santiago)

The absolute best experience I had taken away and will keep very good memories of is having dinner at the Meson Nerudiana in Bellavista, a house built as a replica of one of Pablo Neruda’s houses (Casa de la Isla Negra) south of Valparaiso. Interior is absolutely beautiful, but best place to be in February (in the middle of the Chilean summer season) is obviously out on the terrace, so that’s were we ended up at. Great food – mainly mariscos (seafood) and excellent wine – Chilean wine had been an actual revelation since never had it before back home. Got reassured upon my return back home buying a couple of the higher end bottles (price is obviously double comparted to the one in Chile) but totally worth it.

 Icing on the cake – while having dinner on the terasse, there had been a gentleman coming to our table (organizer of the music venue downstairs) and inviting us to attend a live music show starting shortly in the basement area of the restaurant.

Mistysa

An absolute delight to watch a great band and a great singer play for a delighted audience responding right back and singing along and cheering up all the harmonica, drum, piano and guitar solos. While a rather smallish spot, sound had been absolutely bang on, not too loud or too soft, just great.

A great mix of blues, soul (Aretha), unavoidable Piano Man (Billy Joel), Brazilian and some of lead singer’s Mistysa own compositions available on Macumba CD I ended up taking home more as a souvenir. Surprisingly good to listen to even after. Emotional evening for the Canadian born singer since last one before leaving Santiago to take up some contract back in sunny snowy slushy Montrealwhere she began her singing career with one of the local gospel choirs

Valparaiso

 

Santiago is way inland, so if you feel like having a glimpse of the Pacific you need to take a 1.5 – 2 hours drive to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. All along a series of vineyards responsible for producing some of the local great wines and through a respectable number of tunnels cut through mountains along the way.

 

Valparaiso –an UNESCO protected site – makes for a series of incredible photo ops and exudes an old colonial historic flavor where each spot reveals surprising views uphill to the multicolored houses spread up in layers. Artilleria elevator takes you up to a good spot for admiring Valparaisopanorama and a very busy commercial port. One of the main attractions in Valparaiso is Pablo Neruda’s house that has some of the greatest views over to the Pacific in town. On the very steep way back down there is an area with colorful mosaic covered houses, some Gaudi-like lamp posts and a bench that looks right out of Park Guell in Barcelonaand some run-down building fronts painted in Mondrian style.