Our Pre-Cruise Adventure: A 3-Day Guide to the Heart of Santiago, Chile
We decided to take a cruise down the Chilean Fijords, starting from the port of Valparaiso, so I thought it would be fun to spend a few nights in Santiago ahead of time.
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I’ve always wanted to go to Patagonia but hadn’t gotten around to planning a trip. This cruise sounded like the perfect way to get a taste of it from the warm confines of a Viking Expedition ship, the Polaris, that we know from our trip to Antarctica in 2024.
I haven’t had much of an opportunity to travel to South America yet other than a few business trips to Brazil, and a one night stopover in Buenos Aires. Santiago was our first chance to spend a few nights exploring as tourists.
Our first decision was where to stay. I looked at some basic hotel and neighborhood recommendations and there were a lot of places in the Las Condes area, which I guess is also nicknamed “Sanhattan.” Reading some reviews and some Reddit posts led me instead to Providencia, and we were really happy with our choice.
We stayed at the Ola Providencia, a boutique option from Hilton and it was nice, with a comfortable room, friendly staff and a lot of activity in the neighborhood, locals and tourists alike. Our visit coincided with the Track Cycling world championships, and our hotel hosted several teams, from Japan, Canada, Poland, France, and many others. It was fun to see the cyclists at breakfast and admire their bikes.
We arrived really early from our LATAM flight into Santiago and were lucky to be able to check in and get breakfast. This was our first time flying LATAM and our flight was really nice, a brand new plane with great service.
After breakfast and a shower, we went out to explore in our quest to stay awake as long as possible. We started by walking to the Sky Costanera tower, about a 10 minute stroll from our hotel. Once we got there we found a huge sprawling mall with lots of levels and familiar shops.
The tower was not crowded at all and it was worth the visit. Our elevator operator gave us a little introduction in Spanish and English and let us off at the 61st floor. There are two levels of viewing areas, one inside and one a short escalator ride away that is indoor/outdoor at the top of the tower.
We spent about an hour looking at the views of the city and the Andes, with a low lying haze over all of it. We had coffee and snacks before wandering down and back towards our hotel. There were lots of people shopping in the mall and at the many small vendors along our short walk back.
We still needed to stay awake and decided we needed more walking, so we went off to explore the Barrio Italia, a historic neighborhood settled by Italian immigrants and now home to lots of shops, restaurants and small theaters.
We would normally try to explore a new city using public transportation and all the guidebooks told us it was safe and easy. But we were tired and after seeing how cheap Uber was, we decided to take it easy.
We found out later that due to some favorable tax and import conditions in Chile, new cars are very reasonably priced. According to our tour guide, a new medium-sized car runs around the equivalent of $10,000, and used cars tend to hold their value. There were lots of unique models of cars from all kinds of brands, including some Chinese-built models which we’d never seen before. Since so many people drive, this probably also contributes to the heavy traffic and smog throughout the city.
It was pretty hot that day and we didn’t time our visit very well – it was around 2 o’clock and lots of places were closed. But we did get to wind our way up and down the pretty streets and see some of the unique boutiques. Very few bars and restaurants were open so we headed back to our own neighborhood to find somewhere to eat.
By this time we were very tired and still had some time to kill before dinner, so we asked the front desk clerk for a recommendation. She pointed us to Los Canallas, a small French bistro just a couple of blocks away. We scored a table on the deck and enjoyed a couple of Aperol Spritzes and an appetizer of Burrata.
We originally intended to go somewhere else for dinner but the burrata was so delicious we decided to stay and we were glad we did. Mark had a chicken cordon bleu and I had a burger. We felt lucky when we left and saw the long line of people waiting for a table outside. That persisted for the duration of our stay. We managed to stay up a couple more hours and considered that a victory for our first day.
Exploring Santiago’s History
In the morning we met our guide Eugene for a small group walking tour in Santiago’s Centro area, the main downtown area where about a million people pass through every day to work and shop.
We met in front of the presidential palace, La Moneda, by the statue of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist leader who shot himself just before the military seized power in a coup on September 11, 1973, led by General Augusto Pinochet.
Eugene gave us a pretty straightforward description of the events, including the recognition that the US government was involved (since F-16 fighters bombed the palace) but said that while it was bad, some of the economic changes that opened up Chile’s markets were positive in the long-term.
The human cost was very high – many thousands detained and tortured, many famously held at the national football stadium. After the end of the regime in 1990, an official government commission investigated the politically-motivated executions and “forced disappearances” and presented it in 1991, totaling at least 3,095. Many Chileans are still looking for answers about their loved ones to this day. Prosecutions and further reports continued for years, and Pinochet was eventually charged and died while under house arrest in 2006. He was 91.
Later some others told us that the country was still pretty unstable until the mid 90s. At the moment, Chile’s economy is strong due to its dominance in copper, as the leading exporter worldwide it accounts for more than half the country’s exports. There are evidently also huge lithium reserves so the country’s mining future is bright.
The Santiago metro area is home to about 7 million people in a country of about 20 million. The Centro area felt pretty safe and clean, with a lot of government workers in yellow vests cleaning, tending to the many green park areas and managing graffiti. As you get out of the city there is still plenty of poverty that’s easy to spot from the freeway.
Moving on through from the presidential palace area, we wandered around the Centro area and Eugene explained the history of the many buildings we saw. Chile is in the “Ring of Fire” so Santiago has been reshaped by several major earthquakes in the past. One of the most significant was in 1906 when a lot of the original colonial buildings were destroyed, making way for a new style of architecture built to withstand future tremors.
After the quake and during the boom in copper mining, Santiago made a major transformation downtown with the help of an Austrian urban planner Karl Brunner. The new buildings were built with reinforced concrete and many in the Art Deco style that was popular at the time, and a lot of these buildings remain in the center.
Today this area is a mix of Art Deco and modern buildings, with plenty of banks and other financial institutions. You can tell that a lot of wealth flows through this area.
Eugene took us into the Banco de Chile location for a nice surprise. It doesn’t look like that much from the outside but inside is a beautiful dome and atrium built in the Beaux Arts style, with the original bank teller stations that look like something out of a Harry Potter movie. It was built during the heyday of Santiago’s transformation in 1926, and has withstood every earthquake since with ease.
Moving on from the city center we went back in time to the Plaza de Armas, a large square at the heart of Santiago that was established by the Spanish in 1541. When we visited it was full of tourists and street performers gathered in front of the grand Metropolitan Cathedral, the largest church in Chile.
Santiago Churches
Chile is a very Catholic country and we visited a few different churches during our walking tour. The Metropolitan Cathedral dates back to the late 18th century and has been rebuilt and reinforced over the years due to the earthquakes. Inside it’s very ornate with beautiful paintings and decor similar to the major European cathedrals we’re used to seeing. The town and the church were gearing up for celebrations for the 2025 Catholic Jubilee.
Down the street a little we walked by the site of a former famous Santiago church, now a memorial garden. The Jardines del Ex Congreso Nacional remembers the victims of the fire at the Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús or Church of the Company that happened in 1863.
A fire started inside during a celebration of the Immaculate Conception and because the doors of the church only opened inward, thousands were trapped inside and died. It’s estimated that about 2 to 3 percent of Santiago’s population perished in the fire, many women and children. The garden has a couple of beautiful statues but notably, their faces are turned away from the doors of the memorial.
After the fire, the city started the Santiago Volunteer Fire department in response, and today the fire department remains an all-volunteer force.
When I visit churches around the world, I try to light a candle whenever I can. I noticed that there were no candles to light in any church we visited in Chile so I wonder if this tragic fire is what has stopped this practice.
Towards the end of our tour, we stopped by the oldest church in Santiago, the Church of San Francisco, with its colonial origins back to the 16th century. Thanks to its thick stone foundation and walls, this church remains standing and active after the many earthquakes.
Santa Lucia Hill
We ended our tour at Santa Lucia Hill, a beautiful multi-level park in the center of town. It features winding ornate staircases, a Neptune fountain, and sweeping views of the city. The park was filled with tourists and locals enjoying the sunshine and taking selfies. A great way to finish our tour.
Barrio Bellavista and Pablo Neruda
After our tour Eugene recommended Barrio Bellavista as a good place to head for lunch, so we walked over there to see what we could find. We were probably a little too early for an authentic lunch so we didn’t see a whole lot of places open. We wound up at a very modern food hall called the Terrazas San Cristobal with a lot of people standing outside trying to get us to come in but almost no one eating inside.
We did a lap through the place and settled on a Chilean restaurant, Zacarias Cochina Chilena. It was clean and welcoming and although our waiter’s English was rusty, we managed well and we had our first authentic Chilean meal. I had a very simple but fresh salad with hearts of palm and avocado and Mark had a beef sandwich, also with tons of avocado. Both were good and not that spicy. Chile does not equal chili – we found most of the food to be less spicy than we expected.
After lunch I was happy to see that La Chascona was just around the corner. The home of Nobel laureate poet Pablo Neruda was on my list to visit so we got in line to see it.
As it turned out, we got there just after a very large tour group of students arrived, so we wound up waiting in the line for some time. We started chatting with three young Chinese students who were on a vacation from their university in the US and we had a great time talking about traveling, what it was like for them living in the US and what their plans were for the future. One of the three loved Pablo Neruda so he had dragged the other two to the museum, and seeing his enthusiasm encouraged me to stay in line. If they hadn’t been there we might have moved on and missed out.
Once we finally got in we understood why we had to wait so long. La Chascona is a big “house” but it’s made up of lots of small separate rooms. We had an excellent audioguide that explained the history of the place and how it survived the Pinochet regime and continues to honor its owner, one of the world’s most influential writers and national poet of Chile.
I love to read but I’m not especially into poetry, so Pablo Neruda didn’t mean that much to me before the tour. I knew he had won the Nobel prize for literature, but I had no idea of the impact he had on his native country. He published more than 60 volumes of poetry and had his first breakout book when he was just 19. He was active in the government and close friends with President Salvador Allende. From 1971 to late 1972 he was the Chilean ambassador to France.
Neruda originally built the house as a secret hideaway for his mistress Mathilda Urrutia in the early 1950s. It started as just a couple of rooms, then later when the two began living together openly and eventually married, they expanded it a couple of times, adding a kitchen, dining room, library and bar.
At the time of the military coup in 1973, Neruda was very ill and under treatment for cancer. Days after the coup La Chascona was raided and looted, and much of the house was flooded with water and mud from a nearby irrigation canal. After he died less than two weeks later, his wife defiantly held his wake in the house among all the destruction, and thousands of mourners made the procession with his casket to the cemetery. Since the regime had banned an official funeral it was considered the first public protest of the dictatorship.
Mathilda lived in the house until she died in 1985. She restored it as best as she could to its original look, though many of the items inside now are replicas. She also created the Neruda Foundation that runs the museum today.
San Cristobal Hill
After our visit to La Chascona we took a short walk to ride the historic funicular up to San Cristobal Hill. It’s been running since 1925 when the hill area became a huge city park. On the short trip up we got a spectacular view of the city.
Once at the top we explored the famous Sanctuary of the Immaculate Conception, which consists of a few small buildings, a beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary at the top, and a big, open air amphitheater where Pope John Paul said mass when he visited in 1987.
Like most religious places we’ve visited, there were people of all ages at the sanctuary and a steady stream of people climbing to the top to see the statue. From the top there was a sweeping view of the city.
After our visit at the top, we walked down a bit to catch the more modern teleferico or cable car back down to the city. There is also a zoo as part of the park, but it was closed for construction and they were building an extension to the cable car that would stop within the zoo. At the bottom of the park there were a lot of shops and snacks and displays targeted at zoo visitors and there were some young families there enjoying the day.
Sushi in Chile
After our walk in the park, we headed across the street to the Providencia neighborhood to find our dinner restaurant, Piso Uno. We love sushi and this place had great reviews, so we decided to treat ourselves to a sushi feast.
The restaurant was at the base of a hotel in a very busy neighborhood, very modern with lots of restaurants and bars. As is typical for us Americans, we were on the early side for dinner so we got a great spot outside.
With the help of our server, we picked out a cold sake and shared an incredible plate of sushi and sashimi. Everything was really delicious, including some steak nigiri and a torched steak roll, not things we normally order. For dessert we finished with a pistachio lava cake – something I’ve never seen before but I think should replace the boring chocolate lava cakes we see everywhere in California.
Learning about Chilean Wine
The next day we spent on a tour of the nearby Maipo Valley wine country that I had organized before we left through Colchagua Wine Tours. We’ve done a lot of wine tasting during our travels but I knew next to nothing about Chilean wines. I knew that Maipo was the closest to Santiago and easiest for a day trip.
Osvaldo picked us up from our hotel and we made our way out of the city in his van. We got to see a lot more of Santiago this way – the metropolitan area seems to sprawl forever and there is a lot of new construction. Osvaldo had worked for a multi-national company before starting his tour business and we had a great conversation on the way to our first winery.
Perez Cruz
Our first stop was Perez Cruz Vineyards, a family owned boutique winery that produces about a million bottles a year. The family has owned the property for more than sixty years and they now have more than 600 acres dedicated to growing grapes.
Amanda gave us our private tour and she walked us around the property, from the grapes in various stages of growth, to the really impressive production facility and told us all about their investment in technology and sustainability. We did a barrel tasting with her that was the best I’ve ever done in a winery – it was one of the first times I could really taste the difference in the three wines and understand what was going on with the process.
Amanda also told us the story of the Carmenere grape. This grape was originally grown in Bordeaux and was used as a blending grape in many wines. But most of the region’s crop was wiped out by disease in the mid-19th century and French growers didn’t replant it.
Somewhere along the way, Chilean wine farmers brought some cuttings to start their own vineyards and they thought that Carmenere was Merlot. It didn’t really grow the same way because it stayed green longer in the season so they called it “Late Merlot.” Then in the 90s a French wine expert visited Chile and suspected that “Late Merlot” was really Carmenere and confirmed it via DNA testing.
Now Carmenere is one of Chile’s flagship wines and we got the opportunity to taste several different vintages during our visit.
We had so much fun with Amanda that we got a little behind schedule and had to hurry to get back to the van to get to our lunch reservation at Bodega 1883.
Concho y Toro and Bodega 1883
It was at this point that I realized how different that Maipo Valley was from other wine regions we’ve visited – it is really spread out. It took us almost an hour to get to lunch and close to another hour to get from there to our third stop later in the day.
Osvaldo got us to lunch and they had no problem accommodating us even though we were late. Bodega 1883 is within the Concho y Toro complex, which looked like a typical Napa Valley destination winery. If I had done my homework before I left, I would have realized what a big deal this winery was – not only is it Chile’s top wine exporter, it’s the fourth largest wine producer in the world.
Though I didn’t recognize the name, I did recognize one of their flagship brands – Casillero del Diablo. Though I’ve never tried it, I’ve seen these wines in most every grocery store or wine shop I’ve ever visited, which makes sense because they sell more than 5 million cases a year in 130 countries.
We didn’t tour the winery, but it was really impressive even to walk through and it looked like it had been recently renovated. Instead we had a really nice lunch, including our first empanadas, pizza and a fresh salad. I had a glass of their Carmenere and it cost more than our lunch, but it was definitely worth it – probably my favorite wine of the whole day.
After lunch, Osvaldo took us to our last winery, Vino El Principal, in the town of Pirque, not too far from Santiago. El Principal had the most stunning views of the day, with the Andes jutting up right behind their acres of vines.
El Principal was the smallest winery we visited during our stay, producing a smaller selection of wines and about 165,000 bottles a year. We tasted their selection in their private tasting room that was just off the cellar – while it was nice and cool in there it seemed a shame to be away from the beautiful view.
We weren’t super excited about the wines we tried, but Amanda from Perez Cruz told us that their Memorias was her very favorite wine, so we took a chance and bought a bottle of the 2008 vintage to enjoy later on our trip. We drank it on my birthday and it definitely lived up to the hype.
Our last evening in Santiago
After our last visit Osvaldo took us back to our hotel in Santiago. We didn’t have anything planned for dinner so he suggested we check out the MUT – the Mercado Urbano Tobalaba – which turned out to be a short walk from our hotel.
The MUT is a multi-level modern shopping center with tons of restaurants, coffee shops and interesting retail shops. There are some big international brands as well as lots of small little kiosks and shops, and it was filled with people the evening we visited. It’s quite close to a metro stop so it looked like a lot of people were meeting up with friends after work.
There is an extensive food court on the bottom floor as well as many other restaurants with indoor and outdoor seating on the higher floors. It took us a while to find an available table, but we finally settled on an Italian spot, Toni Lautaro. It was packed with people and was doing a steady take-out pizza business as well.
We shared one of the most interesting chicken caesar salads of my life – the Great Caesar Escalope. It was a giant fried chicken breast covered in lettuce and parmesan. It was really delicious and a unique last meal in Santiago.
Summary
Since neither of us have traveled much in South America, we didn’t know what to expect from Santiago. But we discovered a beautiful and vibrant city, with excellent food and wine, stunning mountains, and a complex and interesting history. I’d love to go back to Chile for another visit in the future.
Check out all the places we visited on Trip Advisor.