Day 2 - Santiago

Woke up at 11am. Went to bed last night at 8pm, so even allowing an hour of wakefulness at various times that's still 14 hours of sleep. I had no idea I was so tired, though Lynn was not completely surprised.

By the time we were fully awake, organised and stumbled blinking into the sunlight it was getting on for 1pm. We found a place for breakfast/lunch/brunch 100m from the hotel, pizza with coffee/beer. Revived, we climbed the steps at Cerro Santa Lucia. Even given that the hill-park was a little run down, it was still a mostly cool and quiet escape from the city streets. We found our way to the top; the castle, Castillo Hidalgo, was closed so the paths are a bit of a vertical maze.

Then on the the Plaza de Armas. Effectively the town square (every South American town has one). Which was hot, loud and lively.

We were back in our room in time for our 4pm massage. This is not something either of us would normally do, but it was included in the room rate. However both of us agreed it was particularly good and very relaxing.
The final part of what was generally an indulgent and relaxing day was dinner at Borago. Ranked 26th best restaurant in the world (yes, I appreciate that such rankings are meaningless and impossible but visiting them forms something of a focus) and specialising in extremely local, extremely seasonal produce. It was some distance from the hotel and getting there involved driving through the edge of the political protests, which were pretty settled by then. Still, there was some burning rubbish in the road and masked youths who stopped the Uber and wanted money - they were placated with a few coins from the driver, which seemed a modest request.

Don't worry. I'll not inflict pictures of all 16 courses on you, but here are a couple of highlights -
The Plum Branch:

Mariscal in a Pumpkin:

Roasted Flowers a la Van Gogh with mushrooms cooked in a seaweed bladder:

Duck aged on bees wax with wilted beetroot leaves on murra miso:

And finally, ice brulee of bitter plants from the Atacama desert with rose icecream sandwich:

It was hard to know what to show you and I had to leave out the abalone, conger eel, deer crudo and others. We also had a very pleasant orange wine (the Enredo Gewürztraminer - Riesling from Bodegas RE in the Casablanca Valley).
We were fairly tired by the end of it, still suffering the lingering effects of jet lag, and Lynn struggled for about the last four courses. Tomorrow may be a bit easier.