Vina Del Mar

Down to the Chilean Coast

Street art, Pelicans and the Pacific Ocean

To the coast we will go

03/10/2018: Day 1

We have caught the bus from Santiago to Vina Del Mar to stay for the next couple of nights. Getting to the bus went surprisingly well given that we didnt really know what we were doing. We walked down the road to the subway and caught it to the bus station where we hopped on the next bus to Vina Del Mar. It was a long but comfortable journey down to the coast. The bus took 2 hours to get there but we managed to sleep quite a lot of it which was nice.

Our Air BnB was amazing! Right on the waterfront with the most amazing views of the Pacific. We were supposed to have just a private room in the appartment but the owners were away so ended up having the whole place to ourselves.

There were Pelicans and a Castle right across the road, and we had the most amazing evening walking along the coast. We had ice creams and sat in the park and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Or I did anyway, Louise is now getting quite sick, hopefully a good nights sleep will have her as right as rain in the morning.

04/10/2018: Day 2

Valparaiso!

Today we caught the metro from Vina Del Mar to see the UNESCO World Heritage Town of Valparaiso. We did another Free Tour for the morning. We walked around 2 of the 42 hills of Valparaiso, Happy Hill and Concepcion Hill (the two Elite neighbourhoods of Valparaiso). We caught the Funicular up to the top and then spent the morning walking around, looking at the street art, the buildings and learning about the history of this World Heritage Town. I even made a new friend in one of the street dogs, it was being picked on by the other dogs so I gave it a pat to cheer it up and it then followed us around for the rest of the day. I named her Isabelle, and if Chile was our last stop instead of our first I would have totally adopted her.

After the tour we doubled back on ourselves to explore the same hills all over again, taking our time to look at all the art work. We even stopped at the beautiful Rosa Cafe, a protected building at the top of Concepcion Hill. The view was amazing, and it was so nice to rest our feet.

After that we hopped on the metro back to Vina Del Mar. While Louise is feeling a lot better today, I am feeling a lot worse so we had a quick nap at the Air BnB before venturing out for dinner. We managed to find a very nice restaurant where we got a seafood platter to share and I finally had some Chilean Red Wine (Louise had a beer).

Back to Santiago first thing tomorrow but Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar have been a fantastic couple of days break from the city!