November 22nd, Santiago Chile

After leaving Hunstville at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, arriving in Santiago at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, spending most of Saturday at two wineries....we are about to leave Santiago for Valpraiso tomorrow morning.  Well, there is a little more to it than that.  

The timetable is accurate, but its been a non-stop adventure so far.  Although we were lucky enough to have an empty seat between us on the 9-1/2 hour fight to Santiago, we neither got much, if any sleep.  But after arriving at our hotel, we dropped our luggage off and kept going.  We enjoyed a great lunch of various seafood at a small Chilean cafe and walked around until check in time.   Then, after a quick shower and a power nap (30 minutes), off we go again to the subway to Plaza del Armas and the central market.  We made a stop by the Santiago cathedral, which although under construction, was pretty impressive.  We made a stop and picked up a bottle of wine and an empanada and enjoyed both on the outside patio at our hotel.  At 8:30 p.m., we were done!   We woke up at 8:15 a.m. today and realized we must have been much more tired than we realized. 

Having seen about as much of Santiago as we wanted to, we chose to spend today at the neaby vineyards and wineries.  We had prearranged a tour of Concha y Toro, which many of you know that we are very familiar with....and had the hotel contact the Santa Rita winery and arrange to get us on the noon tour.   We headed out and after about 45 minutes on the subway, we got off at the most southern stop and hailed a taxi for the rest of the trip to the wineries. 

They saved the best part of the tour for last, as we were treated to a great wine tasting.  Very informative....best I remember!