After a restful night at the Holiday Inn SCL airport, right in front of the terminal, I was happy to pick up Myriam, my "best friend" arriving from Europe on the morning Iberia flight. I did book this flight for her a few months before using Avios thanks to the fantastic promotion Iberia was having a few months before when 9000 avios we granted as a bonus for each flight booked (and that particular detail mattered as I never flew the 10x Santander-Madrid flights I did book for 25 Euros each back then :-D). For basically less than 500 Euros, including taxes and YQ, I was able to fly her from Lyon to Santiago in Economy and back from Lima to Lyon in Business class on Iberia a week later.
It is even more funny to write those lines now as that back then, we just started dating (we were best friends since high school pretty much), and although during the South African part in November we were not officially together, this trip to Santiago and Peru was the first official vacation as a couple for us. So calling her my best friend, 3 years later feels weird, but anyway this was the official story back then :-D
After welcoming her at the airport, we took an Uber to reach our hotel for the weekend, the very nice Doubletree by Hilton Vitacura.


Sky Costanera tower, the tallest in South America I think, near the Doubletree Vitacura.

It was my second time in Santiago, and the first time for Eva and Myriam, so we started out visit in the Bellavista district and had lunch there, before taking the cable car to go up to the Cerro San Cristobal...


Plaza Baquedano and the Telefonica headquarters (looks like an old fashioned mobile phone when you look at it)


Patio Bellavista for lunch








Going up to Cerro San Cristobal with the cable car












Cerro San Cristobal

We then walked in the parc down the hill and went towards the Moneda and the university.


Lots of urban art in Santiago


Parque Forestal








The Moneda square. Not that many pictures this time as there was lots of construction that time !


As I said, lots of construction means that you need to find the right angle !

The following day we relaxed a bit and just discovered the area of Los Condes.

In the last evening we had dinner with Ximena, who I met 4 months before in Bangkok and who was by chance visiting her brother in Santiago that week, I think it's cool to be able to see people you met in different places in the world again !


It's the story of 2 French, 1 Hong-Kongese American and 2 Chileans having dinner together.... :-)

As I am writing those lines 3 years later, I am looking forward to going back to Chile at the end of this year, hopefully get to go to Patagonia again and also the North of the country with the Atacama desert. For the story, we decided to go there as I was looking for some good business class fares for a good Chilean friend of mine living in Maastricht and his wife to go back to see his family for the holidays. After finding this, we decided to book too ! Looking forward to trying Air Canada business class and the Toronto Signature suite on the way ! :-D

Next : LATAM lounge in SCL, LATAM Peru flight SCL-LIM (Premium Eco) + El Salon domestic lounge LIM and LATAM Peru flight LIM-CUZ (Economy)