Chile 2010

Arrived Thursday 9th September, a few hours before we left...does your head in every time.
back to the favourite place Hotel del Patio in Bellavista, a really interesting neighbourhood of Santiago. www.hoteldelpatio.cl/english
The problem was, that they are still building the university across the road, so the noise is terrible, not the mention the party goers coming out of the clubs at 4 or 5 am and the music blaring from various bars for most of the night. I wear earplugs, so I sleep ok, but for new comers it is a bit of a shock.
Of course they had the big earthquake at the start of the year, so some of the construction noise was from re-building. I only saw one building that was obviously damaged from the quake. A taxi driver told me that most of the damage is on the outskirts of town as the CBD was rebuilt quickly.
One thing that has changed is that businesses have gone or changed names since I was here last April. My favourite restaurants had gone! I will have to change my links now.
However, a whole set of new restaurants have emerged on the cityside of Patio Bella vista, so we didn't go hungry.
Grills, cafes, jazz bars, French bistros, rock bars...you name it, it is there.
Sarah and I enjoyed one of our first nights at the Bistrot Jazz Club Le Fournil where we were treated to a big night of Latin Jazz.  "con Antoine Alvear Quinteto".  We were seated right up the front of the small room, and could practically drum ourselves. A whole bunch of musos came in, perhaps the next band...or not, as they seemed to switch  roles and some of the newcomers appeared to take over the set. www.lefournil.cl.
A few nights later we came back to the bistro and  loved the food. Recommended.
When in Chile you must drink Carmenere of course. We shared a bottle of Vina Chocolain
Carmenere Selection  2009 from Valley Maipo which was very nice to warm up by.
because it was the celebration week coming up for the Bicentenary of Chile there were many events specifically arranged to commemorate it and the other up-risings of the past 200 years.

We ended up in the Casa del Aire  a few times to listen to political songs and hear the crowd noisily join in on the anthems. One night we were in the 'red' bar and heard political songs from singers from Argentina, and Chile.  There were badges for sale, political newspapers and pamphlets from a table manned by bearded students. It seemed like a time-warp.