Today we are taking the metro to visit the National History museum and the Railroad museum in Parque Quinta Normal, located in the Yungay area, which is too far for us to walk. Thus, the metro. Our morning is pretty leisurely, as the History museum doesn’t open until 10 and the Railroad museum not until 11, so we are taking our time getting up and getting ready. As we head to the metro station, we see a huge crowd of people, dressed in red with balloons, gathering near where the entrance to the Metro is located. Our map says the metro is past all the people, but as we near the crowd, I see a metro sign and we reverse course and go there instead. A train has just arrived, apparently, because hundreds of people are coming up the stairs as we are fighting our way down, like fish swimming upstream. We finally make it into the station, figure out how to buy and load the BIP card (which is the pre-loaded metro card) with 4 trips and successfully make through the turnstiles (thank you Steve, our Canadian companion tomorrow on our ship transfer/wine tour, for telling us that we only needed 1 BIP card that we could pass between each other!).
We are transferring to Line 5, which is a really long walk, but the signage is great and there are no missteps underground. The trains run every 3 to 5 minutes, so there is barely a wait for the next, then with a whoosh, we are off, and 15 minutes later deposited directly outside the gates to Parque Quinta Normal. Perfect! The park is incredibly huge too, with gorgeous spreading trees providing lots of shade, tons of green expanse and paths bisecting the entire area. It isn’t as crowded as we would expect for a Saturday morning, but that makes it nicer for us to stroll through the paths, passing pretty fountains on our way to the Natural History museum.
The building in which the museum is housed is a gorgeous old building, with a storied history. It was designed and built in 1875 by a French architect to house the First International Exposition, in order for Chile to show the world its progress in the 19th century. Originally called the “Exposition Pavilion,” after the exposition, the building was turned over to the Agricultural Institute and turned in the museum in 1876. Since then it has been renovated and repaired many times, sometimes being closed completely in order to repair earthquake damage. In 1991 it was declared a national Monument, giving credence to the fact that it is one of the oldest museums in Latin America.
Inside, the displays are interesting worth a walk around, practicing our Spanish by reading all the placards in the different areas. We go from evolution to dioramas of different subsections of the country to the history of whales to a great special exhibit on the Cinchorro people who had a special way of embalming and preserving the dead (one fascinating part of this display is a video that describes how they went about figuring out what was inside the mummy sarcophagi and how they used modern technology like MRIs and modeling software to recreate the displays). It’s a nice way to spend an hour or so on a pretty Saturday morning.
It is getting on toward noon, so we strike out to find lunch at a restaurant I had scoped out. It takes us out of the park, and in the opposite direction of the railroad museum, but the walk won’t kill us, and the timing will be totally off if we stay in the park and go to the RR museum first. The city streets are eerily empty (as opposed to yesterday in the Plaza de Armas part of town), which makes it easier to navigate the grid-organized streets to find the restaurant….closed! Darn it. We have the worst luck! The signs are all outside, but the doors are locked up tight. Another little restaurant is opening up a few doors down, but once again it is the Menu del Dia, and we don’t want that much food. We happen upon a Peruvian restaurant, El Ajicito, a bock or so away, and fortunately they are open – if just barely. They are setting up for some special event in the courtyard, so we are shown to a table nearer the front door, where we each order a quarter chicken solo (no fries, no nothing, which gets a puzzled look from the waiter, who eventually shrugs and goes off to place our order). The dining space is cute and simple, but with gorgeous, colorful, gigantic framed paintings of Peru which brighten up the space. The wine here is only by the bottle or half bottle, so 2 beers it is to go with our chicken quarter – which comes out of the kitchen beautifully plated and prepared. And it is absolutely perfect for us. Just the right amount of food.
After lunch, we head back to the park, which is much more busy at this time of day, and walk toward the RR museum.
Following Google maps, which doesn’t always give you the correct directions, we head down a path along the side of the Natural History Museum. There isn’t hardly anyone around these paths, except a few joggers, but we are following our map when a security vehicle pulls up and starts speaking rapid Spanish to us. After a frustrating couple of minutes, we finally realize they are asking us what we are looking for – to which I reply ferrovia, which is the wrong spelling and pronunciation, but at least one of the guys in the car gets it! And with great flourish tells us we are going the wrong way and to go right, left, left and then poof! (All in Spanish mind you – but I can understand basic directions!) After thanking them profusely, we head off in the correct direction and find the Ferroviario museum right where advertised!
This is an awesome outdoor museum opened in 1984 with 16 locomotives, 4 passenger carriages and 1 freight wagon – all saved from various stockyards and companies to preserve the history of Chile’s stream train industry, an important part of transportation in the country and the region. The trains are strategically around the park, with explanations (in English too) of what type of engine, when and where it was built and for what it was used. Seriously, fascinating! One locomotive we could walk under to see the inner workings, which was pretty cool. Another we could climb up into to work the levels and switches (oh, and ring the bell, which we didn’t know until we got out and the kids all started doing it). We could go into a couple of passenger carriages to see accommodations from that era, which were pretty nice with stuffed leather benches and seats. They even had switching equipment which you could try out, and which turned out to be really, really heavy! Those guys had to have muscles to move those switches, that’s for sure.
Once through with the museum, we walk back out through the park, hitting the Natural History museum for their bathrooms (and boy, is that museum packed now! It pays to be early around here!), then back to the metro. We had originally planned to go out to Los Dominicos, an area at the end of the Metro line where there was an artisan craft market, but, instead, we decide to go to the Cementarios General, the oldest cemetery in Santiago (begun in 1821) and the largest in the country with over 2 million people buried there. Its on all the off the beaten path tours, so we figure we’ll go tour it ourselves.
The metro is easy, only one transfer, then the cemetery ends up being right outside the subway exit. Perfect! And this place lives up to its expectations! First of all it is monstrous. There is a map that we can barely process, it is so large and so many different sections and lanes (which they call patios). Crazy. We start to just wander down the main street upon which we entered, marveling at all the mausoleums and tombs. The first sets we see are similar to what is found in Europe, the 3 or 4 story concrete structures with little tombstones placed next to each other, but after a row or 2 of those, the tombs become individual family tombs built from stone or marble, in all sorts of different shapes, sizes and designs: art deco, colonial, Aztec (yep, Aztec), modern, you name it, the design is here. There is even a mausoleum condo. It is 6 stories high with a gated entrance and a curved staircases that allows access to the tombs placed along the outside walls. Amazing! We are pretty much just meandering through the lanes without too much of a destination in mind, but Ed does want to find the tomb of Salvador Allende, which we saw on the map, but now can’t make heads or tails out of the direction.
So, we keep walking around, and just by happenstance actually stumble upon it in the middle of one of the presidential sections (there are 32 presidents buried here). It is a stark white modern looking edifice, with a basement area for the family, that Ed walks down to visit while a grounds keeper is watering the plants up above. I walk around the front for better photos and the grounds keeper says something to me, pointing to Ed, and I point to myself indicating we are together, when he says something else, don’t know what, but I interpret it to mean Ed needs to get out of there so he can keep watering – or maybe Ed will get wet. Either way, I call to him to hurry up, and he gets the grounds keeper to laugh when he sees the hose and mimics putting it all over his head.
After that fun little meeting, we just wander our way back through hundreds of different mausoleum and tombs, including the area devoted to children and infants which are so small and sad, to the metro for our ride back home.
Trying to reload our BIP card proves difficult because I get my zeros confused. I know it should be 1400, but I pull out 15,000 and totally confuse the poor ticket girl. Finally another girl there spoke English and I realized my mistake. Lo siento! But, we got it accomplished and ran down to the turnstiles just as a train was coming. Unfortunately, the 1 pass, 2 people thing isn’t the fastest and by the time Ed got through the trains doors were shutting. I tried to stop it but a metro guard shook his finger at me and said no. Sigh. Oh well, at least they run frequently so it isn’t too long a wait.
As we are standing on the platform, the guard comes up to us and I think, uh oh, I’m in trouble! But no, he is so sweet, he tells us how to use the BIP card better – that we need to use 2 machines, not 1 – swipe the card on both machines one after the other and it is faster. Thank you for helping and not arresting me! Then he goes away, then comes back to start to chat about English and what he should say for a “formal” goodbye. “Is goodbye good enough?” To which we explain American English doesn’t have too many “formal” words and that “goodbye” is perfect. We teach him the informal, bye bye, or so long, or see you around. I don’t think he got all that, but he did get goodbye!
We hop on the train, make our transfer to the 1 line easily, then hop off at the Catholic University stop because we had been looking around the web last night to see if we could find any wine from La Recova, the wonderful little winery we visited when we were here a few years ago. Ed found some on the website of a store called BBVines located close to this stop. Following Google Maps, but with a little bit of a leery eye, we managed to get to a place where the map said the wine store was right in front of us, but all that was there was the huge wall of some campus museums. Weird, but we decided to go investigate. Inside the courtyard of this area there is a map, that is of absolutely no help to us – it just points out the museums and says nothing about any wine store. We spy a guard at the door, so I go over and show her the map with BB Vines and ask if she can help. Very rapid Spanish ensues, to which I plead “Lentamente, por favor,” which does slow her down enough for us to figure out the store is in the basement of the building across from us. Terribly bizarre location – the only retail store in the place, but whatever! We found it – unfortunately we don’t find the wine – it is only available online. Darn! The girl says it is difficult to get, and we explain that he is a tiny little winery, so we can understand it is difficult to get inventory. Oh well, it was a nice idea.
From there we walk home, passing an Italian festival or display or something that has replaced the drummers on the sidewalk by the University. There is something going on all the time around here. Rested and refreshed, we head out to our restaurant of choice for this evening, Viva la Vida, where of course, our hopeful waiter isn’t there, but we do have a wonderful waitress who serves us beautifully on the patio of the first floor garden. The restaurant itself has 3 floors, some might be open air because we’ve seen reviews that seemed to be saying that, but we’re happy on the ground floor patio with the fan pointed in our direction. After a beer and a wine, we get down to business and order ceviche for Ed and Pastel de Choclo for me. The Pastel de Choclo seems to be the local dish here, and I’ve seen it everywhere (even asked one of the hawkers in La Vega Chica what it was when I saw they were preparing a bunch) but haven’t tried it. Figured it’s the last night, what the heck?
Oh, now I’m so sorry I missed out on this! It is this bowl full of deliciousness! Inside the bowl are chunks of chicken, a bit of ground beef, chopped olives, onions and maybe mushrooms and hard boiled eggs (in this case halved) topped with a mashed corn mixture that is similar in consistency and flavor to stuffing, cooked to a golden brown and served sizzling inside an earthenware crock. Holy cow! That is totally on my recipe list for the summer now. It was superb. And Ed’s ceviche was excellent as well, big chunks of perfectly marinated fish with lots of onions and some excellent, crunchy garlic bread to dip.
On the way home, we stop for my traditional last night sweets. This time not banana roti, but churros, piping hot from the churros truck that is always parked at the end of the block. Again, heaven! Sadly Ed can’t really have them until the morning (when we hope they will be just as good) and I am a good girl and resist eating them all, saving him half. It was hard though!
Night cap on the balcony, and it’s time for bed. Tomorrow – we are off to the ship.
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