Getting any sleep during the flight was an impossibility. It must have been the most turbulent flight that I have ever been on. Sleeping on a plane is already difficult for me, but with my head being constantly tossed around, you can forget trying to get any sleep at all. We landed around 7:30AM in Santiago and were ready to begin our day. We still had to go through customs, collect our baggage, and check in to our hotel.
The first thing we noticed about the weather in Santiago was that it was cold (in the 40s F) and quite overcast. Both Alice and I were feeling pretty miserable at this point, probably from the turbulent flight, lack of sleep, and cold weather. We are staying at the Hotel Orly in the Provencia district, but a room wouldn’t be available to us until 2PM, so we decided to rest up in the recreation room before heading out to explore the city.
We explored the neighboring areas looking for a place to eat. There seemed to be a lot of fast food restaurants, but we were looking for something more. There were a lot of sandwiches, hot dogs, pizzas, and burger joints. Fast food chains from home that were available to us were McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and of course a Starbucks. We finally settled on a bar & grill place called Mamut. It kind of reminded of a Chili’s. Our hostess didn’t speak any English and of course we didn’t speak much Spanish, so that was kind of interesting. Alice wanted some hot water with her meal, but the waitress didn’t quite understand when Alice ordered some “agua caliente.” She kept thinking that Alice wanted tea, as if the order was too simple and that no one would want plain hot water. I found it amusing, since I didn’t think ordering hot water could be lost in translation. I had the New Orleans steak which came with grilled onions on top with fries on the side and one egg over easy. Alice had the Boston burger which was basically a burger with lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and bacon. Lunch wasn’t anything special, and nope we didn’t get to try the local cuisine yet.
Sleep beckoned. We just didn’t have the energy to continue exploring, so we headed back to the hotel for a nap. Since we have to get up early the next day, we decided to have dinner early and ate at the hotel restaurant. I ordered the sea bass filet with cream of pumpkin soup. To drink, I had juice of some local fruit that I don’t know how to spell. It had a pinkish/whitish color to it and kind of tasted like pineapple juice. Alice had the chicken filet with ratatouille vegetables. The drink was quite good and the meals were okay.