First Family Road Trip - Valparaiso and Renaca

First of all, Mom/Dad - we have no incidents to report.  Others - my Dad was mugged when they went to Valparaiso 15 or so years ago and will not (or at least my Mom won't) be setting foot in the city again.

That said - we had our own adventures.  I was really ready to get out of Santiago for the weekend and everybody suggested that Vina del Mar was the place to go.   It is billed as THE resort town to visit (especially in the summertime) but people suggested that we find a place to stay a bit north along the ocean.  Unlike Punta del Este where we go to visit Rob's folks, it appeared to be more of a city on the ocean with a lot of buildings than an exclusive resort town.  Part of the difference is that it is basically a continuation of Valparaiso which is an historical port city.  By the way, for those folks in Indiana/Chicago - it is definitely not called "Valpo" and has five syllables instead of four ;-).  So we stayed at Hotel Neruda Suites in Renaca, the first city/town beyond Vina.  The web site makes it look a lot, I stress A LOT, nicer than it is but the location was definitely better than staying in Vina.


Our hotel was right on the ocean and overlooked a large rock where sea lions hung out in masses.  For anybody who has been around masses of sea lions you can imagine how our evening went.  I was woken up periodically by what I thought was a schoolyard full of croupy kids.  The coast looked a lot like the Northern California coast - we may be able to skip that part of the tour when Rachel and her family comes in December.




Lonely Planet suggested that we couldn't fail by trying out one of the seafood restaurants either in Renaca or farther up the coast.  So we tried one out and Rob decided that the kids had to try an appetizer of mixed "mariscos (seafood)."  Perhaps it was instinct, perhaps it was generations of tradition, but my kids wouldn't try it and Rob ate the whole thing.

He looks happy here but.......

Jonathan, Rob and I all had fish and the girls stuck with chicken - this is important for later......It was a great view and we enjoyed watching the seagulls, Peruvian Pelican (see below) and the sunset.

















In succession, Rob at 1:30 am, J. at 5:30, and me at 7:00, the three of us "felt" the effects of what must have been some bad fish or sauce.  Rob had it the worst and he and I independently came up with the theory that the gods of kashrut struck him down ;-)  Unfortunately, all three of us also had the reineta (Pippin - a very common fish here) with a white tarragon sauce so that may have been the culprit.






So we somewhat changed our plans for the day and after a late start just stayed close to bathrooms.  Actually we drove into Valparaiso and up one of the more touristy hills and just walked around a bit, bought some very fresh bread and empanadas and then headed back home.  The bakery "Dimbo" was what all bakeries must have been in Chile at one point - a hole in the wall with amazing bread.




We stopped at a restaurant on the way home where they billed themselves out as having typical chilean food which they did but three of us stayed clear of most of the dishes.  They had some packaged pastries that are made by Dona Elisa so we had to get some.  Basically many different versions of manjar (dulce de leche) and meringue.



They also were playing typical Chilean music and Elisa recognized one of the songs because she is doing a dance to it at school.  Each of the kids has one period of gym a week devoted to learning Chilean folk dances.  I think that this is in anticipation of Fiestas Patrias (what I think is like July 4th).  Renee and Jonathan are less than thrilled about learning these dances both because they are supposed to get dressed up in typical Chilean costumes and because they have to dance with partners.  C'est la vie.

This entry is dedicated to my brother because I finally got some pictures in there!

Oh yeah - forgot to mention - we only lasted until midnight at the La Catolica event on Friday night so I didn't get to dance with Rob ;-)  It was a really nice event though - yummy food, interesting company, and a lot of funny presentations that I just didn't get.