Santiago and Chilean Wine Country

Emiliana is the first winery that we visited.  It's in the Casablanca Valley

which is between Valparaiso and Santiago,

so the climate has some ocean influence.

 

Doesn't this look like California?

Taken from the car along the freeway to Santiago.

We also went to Santa Rita which south east of Santiago.

Santa Rita has a fantastic Chilean and Peruvian archeology museum.  The archeology museum in Santiago was closed because of earthquake damage so we were glad to be able to visit this one.

This arcade is where you taste their wines. 

Your view while tasting is of the gardens in the photos below.  Lovely spot.

We ate lunch at a country restaurant with bottles in the walls.

Then we toured Vina Aquitania, run by one Chilean and 3 French winemakers.

View from Aquitania's tower back to smoggy Santiago.

View towards the Andean foothills

The tasting room and office 

They were bottling the day we were there.

 

Mercado central in Santiago

The Chilean version of Pike Place Market???

The old train station - the inside looks like the supports for the Eiffel Tower.

Catedral Metropolitan

On the Plaza de las Armas

The oldest building in Santiago (I think)

 

Palacio de la Moneda, the presidential palace

 

Valparaiso - Vina del Mar

We disembarked the ship in Valparaiso, Chile.   The Veendam is mid-photo behind all the containers.

Valparaiso is often compared to San Francisco because of its many hills.  When we arrived there, it was very foggy and definitely reminded us of SF.  Just like SF, the sun came out mid day and then it was lovely.

The first thing we did was take an ascensor or funicular up one of the hills.

There are a dozen or so of them around the city and most are very old and rickety.

We could see through the floor boards on ours in a few places.

We walked up and down and around a couple of the hills.  It was very colorful. 

The buildings are painted in many colors and there are murals everywhere.

An art nouveau villa - it used to be owned by a financier but is now a museum. 

He even built his own funicular to take him down the hill to his office!

Vina del Mar is the neighboring resort city with lots of beaches and this famous flower clock.

We went through this museum with artifacts from Easter Island including this maoi.

This palace in a nearby park now holds a museum,

but it was heavily damaged in the 2010 earthquake.