Our hostel breakfast included yogurt, bread with jam and all the coffee you could drink, so I was pretty happy with our morning. We decided we were going to do our own wine tour instead of taking one of the $150 organized tours, since you can access a few of the wineries right from the metro which costs about $1. We rode out to an area that had two vineyards right next to each other : Cousino Macul and Vina Aquitania. We got of the metro and tried walking to Cousino Macul. They had clearly built this vineyard in the projects in order to save money on the land and so the entire area was sketchy and covered in graffiti. After 30 minutes of trying to walk around the vineyard to the entrance, we grabbed a cab to take us the rest of the way. We had missed the 12:00pm time for the English tour, so we decided just to do a wine tasting. They were a little disorganized and so we had to wait about 30 minutes for someone to do the tasting for us. As we waited, we decided that we would say we were doing the tasting for a big party we were hosting in a few months. Luckily this paid off and resulted in them letting us taste an extra wine for free that was not included in the tasting menu.
When we were done with the tasting, the boys who ran the place offered to drive us back to the metro. We agreed and jumped in the car. We then casually asked if there were any other wineries in the area and they suggested we go to Vina Aquitania. But first, they wanted us to join them for lunch. We went to the mall food court down the street from the vineyard and got Subway, which was fine. The problem was that I had not intended on lying for so long (not my idea to begin with by the way) so I was very stressed out about the details of what to say. I did not know "where we lived in Santigo" or "what language school we were studying at" but luckily Alyssa is quick on her feet and had answers for everything...I am the worst liar. After lunch, they dropped us off at the second vineyard and talked to the owner about doing a tour for us. The owner would do a tasting but wouldn't charge us for less than the full tour price which made absolutely no sense if we weren't doing the tour. Because of that, we decided not to even do the tasting and just head back to town. It was a complete bust but the vineyard was beautiful.
Once back in town, we decided to check out the Plaza de las Armas. There were a lot of beautiful buildings with street art and musicians throughout. It was a lot to take in, so we walked around for a few hours exploring.
There were also tons of food kiosks in the area. I had read about the Chilean love of hot dogs and although Alyssa and I normally would never eat such a thing, we decided to try one since it was a specialty in Santiago. This combo came with two dogs and a beer- what a deal! The hot dog actually didn't have much flavor despite all of the crap they piled on top, so we decided this would be our first and only dog.
We headed back to the hostel to shower and change and then go out for some actual food. We weren't starving so we walked around a lot, looking at menus, before we stumbled upon a wine bar I had read some reviews on called "Bocanariz". We decided to have another wine tasting with dinner, which turned out to be better (and cheaper) than our vineyard experience. The waiter recommended an appetizer for me that was an assortment of meat, cheese and vegetables in a "cheese candy" form. I had no idea what this meant until I got my plate. The idea was good but the delivery was not and everything got stuck to the paper they were wrapped in. Luckily for me, I wasn't very hungry, lol.
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