Santiago - Concha Y Toro

Friday August 31

Our room on the second floor of the hostel faces the street. Too noisy and a little to shabby to be chic. We hangs to one of the interior rooms on the first floor. Spacious, stylish and quiet.

Breakfast here is the only time we have been served eggs made to order. The breakfast buffet is also the most ample that we have had during the entire trip. Though, still no real coffee. Only Nescafé.

We decide to go tour Concha Y Toro winery, one of the wineries closest to the city. They have an English language tour that begins at 1:00 pm. I try to make reservations on the website but could not. They only accept reservations with 24 hour notice. We opt to take our chances.

The winery can be reached easily by a combination of subway and taxi (and/or bus) ride. We took the newer number 4 line to the penultimate stop, Las Mercedes. This took about 45 minutes from Barrio Brasil. From there we took a taxi to the main entrance of Concha Y Toro. (There best directions on reaching the winery were found on Concha Y Toro's website.)

We arrived only a few minutes before the tour was to begin but joining it was no problem. No reservations were mandatory on a Friday at this time of year.

The tour lasts about an hour. It starts with a view of the exterior of the main house - which was the Concha Y Toro family's main house. (Yes, Concha Y Toro was their family name.) Then off to the vineyards - dormant at this time of year - and the down to the cellars. There are two wine tastings included in the tour.

We paid for a separate wine tasting, with four wines paired with cheeses, after the standard one hour tour. Most of the people on the tour were either Chilean or Brazilian. Only one other gringo.

To get back to the city we just reversed our trip. We stopped near the Teatro Municipal to get tickets for the evening's ballet gala. We chose limited view balcony seats for 10,000 pesos a piece.

We grabbed an empanada stand (Empanadas Zunino) near the Central Market that was voted as having the second best empanadas in the city. All they serve are empanadas and drinks. We had a couple of empanadas pino. Didn't get our vote for even having the second best empanadas on our trip. But they were filling.

A dash a back to the hostel before we had to leave for the theater. The performance starts at 7:00. We knew from the day before that the subways are impossibly crowded at rush hour. Instead we decided to walk. Not a far walk. Maybe about a half hour.

The Teatro Municipal dates from the 19th century. You can immediately imagine it gaslit and filled with ladies and gentlemen in their finest clothes. The first part of the program was traditional, classical ballet pieces. Tutus and tights. For the second portion, the orchestra was dismissed. Prerecorded music was used. The second half was all modern dance pieces. It ended with a Latin-flavored piece. It was a thrilling end.

We walked back to our Barrio. Ended up at the same cafe as the night before.