The last day of a trip is always tough, doubly so when that last day is Sunday. You get the additive force of the Sunday Blues along with the "End of Trip" Blues, which is a truly dangerous combination. Even in our case, this is heightened given the sheer length of this trip and the load of work that awaits me, but I guess also a smudge lessened by me being here for dinner tomorrow after working the day in Santiago. But still, the last day of a trip always hurts.
I have a strategy (though candidly by no means a unique one), which is to load up on sightseeing and activity that last day. Make it a celebration, make it deep "vacation" - make it busy enough you don't even have a lot of time to wallow. I've had mixed success with this. The best example was on my 2019 Asia trip, where the last full (i.e. non-travel) day of the trip was my one full day visiting Hanoi. In 2022 and 2023 it was forced last days in Ho Chi Minh City. There's a larger strategy of trying to load up multi-week trips with something fun at the end, one of those cities I know will be a good time (Santiago was this already just eight months ago....). Anyway, with that long preamble, let's actually get to this last full day.
There were a few sights I had listed for my parents to visit, with the knowledge that I had booked both meals - a lunch at 1pm at Ambrosia Bistro, and dinner at 8:30 at Mestizo. The latter is a well reputed place but wasn't really on my list, but Sunday's in Santiago are really tough restaurant wise, so I had few other options.
The first sight was maybe the most interesting, visiting the Museo de Memorias y Derechos Humans (Museum of Memories & Human Rights), which completes what I think is a great trio of museums to see the history of Chile. The first is the pre-Colombian one we saw yesterday whch talks about history leading up to the Spanish conquest. Then there's the National History Museum in the Plaza de Armas which goes from the Spanish conquest through the independence drive led by Bernardo O'Higgins, up until the coup by Pinochet in 1973 (we didn't see this museum this time, but have in past). The final piece is this one, which starts with the coup and goes until the overthrow of Pinochet's dictatorship in excruciating, haunting, beautiful detail. It showcases the horrors of, ironically, September 11th when the coup started in earnest, the rest of hte 70s which were a nightmare of disappearing dissidents, exiling others and full sclae supression. Then it covers in great detail the plebiscite vote in 1988 where the country voted to oust the regime, which shockingly the dictatorship honored the will of the people. All of it is an incredible story in a great museum that is modern, informative and reverential, and also shows in a weird way how crazy it is about how modern Chile has become given where they were forty years ago.
It took longer at the museum that we thought, but Ambrosia Bistro honored our late reservation delay, the food there was quite good - Chilean ingredients in fusion-y style, like an excellent "Butter Lamb" (instead of butter chicken) or a foie gras dish where the foie was shaved over local chilean fruits. Better than Ambrosia Bistro was the place it was housed - the MUT (Mercado Urbana Tobalaba).
Located in Sanhattan, a few blocks away from the Gran Torre, the MUT is a signal of just how modern Chile is. This is a semi indoor/outdoor semi above-ground/below-ground mall where each element of that is more impressive than the last. Design stores, bookstores, posh restaurants and bars, wine clubs, all of that houses the above ground levels. The below ground is a more traditional mall with trendy spots and a great foodcourt but that too is semi outdoor with great design touches. This would be fancier than anything in a Denver. It isn't in Denver, it is in the heart of South America's most modern city.
Leaning into that modern-ness was our trip to the Gran Torre (the observation deck itself being named the Sky Costanera, after the Cenco Costanera mall) - 900 feet of beautiful windows and steel, with a 360 degree observation deck on two floors, the first housing a coffee-shop and store, the top being exposed to the open clean air above. Unrestricted views of the vastness of Santiago, the sharpness of its roads, the greenery in every direction (including the giant Parque Forrestal in front of you). Santiago just looks massive from this angle - a shimmering city..
That was the in theory end of our tourism bit except for our pre-dinner walk. Mestizo is a fancy restaurnat frequented mostly by locals nestled in the corner of Parque Bicentenario, a medium-sized (for Santiago) park in the Vitacura neighborhood - the most upscale neighborhood in the city. The park is befitting of that neighborhood with its almost laughably fancy civic center, its various gardens, the large pond with koi and swans, the sculptures, and just hundreds of Chileans enjoying life - families, young couples, cross-generations. All of it is a sight, made better by the setting sun behind Parque Forrestal on one side, rows of nice apartment buildings on the other, and the Gran Torre and other Sanhattan towers in front of you in the distance.
Mestizo gave us this view, but also some really nice food, from a very fresh grilled and pickled octopus, a lovely seafood risotto (seafood is just so fresh here despite not actually being on the ocean), a couple other nice dishes and just an insane lamb dishes - named Cordero Magellanico (Magellenic Lamb) it was a pressed lamb shoulder with this lovely berry, chocolate and lamb jus sauce. This was an exceptional dish, and was worth the price of Mestizo (or at least as much as the view was), cementing this place as my go-to Snuday night meal if any future trips to Santiago would occur (and they will, let's be honest...).
To wrap the last day, we ended it playing rummy at Siete Negronis. In some ways Siete Negronis defined my trip here - teh surprise of seeing it reopen as a sign of a great time to come, its place ending Saturday and Sunday night cementing it as a go-to bar. The negronis are excellent, but the location in the Terraza of Bellavista, and the mood lighting, and the lack of outlandishly loud music, made it a perfect setting to finally win a game of rummy (after my Dad dominated the early trip and my Mom did in Atacama). No better way to end this more lower key vacation (as funny as that sounds) than playing cards, closing out a cocktail bar on a Sunday.
