Santiago randoms 1 - including the miners' rescue capsule en realidad!

Our last few posts have been all about the trips we've been taking out of Santiago - we thought it was time to do some shorter posts about some things that have happened, or are interesting enough to us at least to comment on, in Santiago. We'll do a few posts like this, so this one is imaginatively titled "Santiago randoms 1".

In one of our earlier posts we posted a photo of some street performers at traffic lights. The other day we saw these gymnasts performing slightly riskier manoeuvres at a set of lights:

hup

hup

...away

Santiago has been described as the fast food capital of the world, and it could well be true. Not only do they have a fair but actually refreshingly small amount of the usual foreign stuff - McDonalds, Burger King etc - there are also a whole set of Chilean chains, some small some ubiquitous, and some independent diners or Fuente de Sodas. Some of these are excellent, and some are just greasy. One of our favourites is an independent just down the street from our apartment - the appropriately named "Big Ben's". They serve the full gamut of options from salads ("Ensalada Diet Palta") to the lovely grilled meat churrasco sandwiches you get here. Struan's particular favourite is the Barros Luco - griddled sliced beef with melted cheese!

The Barros Luco is named after a previous president of Chile - Ramon Barros Luco - who used to order this sandwich for lunch in the restaurant of the National Congress.

Struan with a Barros Luco. Yum!

Doggis is one of the Chilean fast food chains. We haven't tried it, but basically instead of burgers the menu is based around hotdogs - a firm favourite among Chileans. The combos of course include sugary soda and fries.

Most sandwiches and hotdogs here can be served as "Italianos" As mentioned previously, an Italiano is a sandwich with tomato (red), avocado (green), and a slug of mayo (white) - Chileans just love this combination. To cater to the market, even the likes of Burger King have gone Italiano...

Hamburguesa Italiana

...it brings to mind this iconic exchange from Pulp Fiction (about 40 seconds into this clip):

Vincent Vega:	[Y]ou know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules Winnfield:	What?
Vincent Vega:	It's the little differences. I mean they got the same sh** over there that they got here, but it's just, just there it's a little different.
Jules Winnfield:	Example.
Vincent Vega:	Alright, well you can walk into a movie theater and buy a beer. And, I don't mean just like a paper cup, I'm talking about a glass of beer. And, in Paris, you can buy a beer in McDonald's. You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules Winnfield:	They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
Vincent Vega:	No, man, they got the metric system, they don't know what the fu** a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules Winnfield:	What do they call it?
Vincent Vega:	They call it a Royal with Cheese.
Jules Winnfield:	Royal with Cheese.
Vincent Vega:	That's right.
Jules Winnfield:	What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent Vega:	Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.
Jules Winnfield:	Le Big Mac. What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent Vega:	I don't know. I didn't go into Burger King.

So from fast food to some cuisine. There are a lot of Peruvian restaurants in Santiago and we've been trying a few. Peruvian food is great - slightly more varied and more spiced than Chilean food. We visited a particularly good Peruvian restaurant for lunch recently with a friend from New York we met skiing here.

presentation is key

Anna, Erica and Struan - with Inka Colas!

We found out this week that the capsule used to rescue the miners is being displayed outside La Moneda (the presidential palace), so we've been down there a couple of times to get a closer look. The first time they had big screens showing scenes from the rescue effort. It's so cool to be able to see this for real.

check it out

The Chileans love queuing (even more than the Brits) and here you can see them queuing to have their pictures taken next to the capsule. There were some cheeky youngsters who jumped the queue from the other side (fully encouraged by their parents) so that they could quickly capture a photo.  The carabinero to the right of the photo took on the role as babysitter as, off camera, they were all jumping into a fountain to the right...

chi-chi-chi le-le-le

From one magnificent breakthrough to another now - Anna made her first empanadas this weekend! We've mentioned these wonderful things before and have to admit they are a real staple for us over here - particularly as we usually work at night so they're a really easy quick supper which you can get from almost anywhere ready to heat and eat.

Anna has been planning to make some homemade empanadas for a while, and so she whipped up some delicious cheese, tomato and oregano ones which we had with a Vina Undurraga cabernet sauvignon which cost us £1.20. Yes, really. 

homemade empanadas

mmm - sunday night supper!

  Chao for now!

pink sunset in Santiago (from our apartment)