Valparaiso

From Santiago de Chile, you can reach the sea in Valparaiso in just two hours by bus. Many travelers say they prefer Valparaiso to Santiago, and we can understand why. We also believe that visiting Santiago is definitely worth it, but Valparaiso is something special that we have not seen before. Valparaiso has a large port, and the oldest part of the city is located near the port, but this area is considered to be unsafe. In addition to the flat area near the port, Valparaiso is also located on many hills that can be reached through steep streets, stairs, or hundred-year-old funiculars. Most travelers stay in Cerro Concepcion (Cerro means hill) or Cerro Alegre, which are considered relatively safe areas.

So we booked accommodation on Cerro Alegre, according to Booking, but according to all the maps we saw, it was actually on Cerro Concepcion, but we didn't do anything wrong with that.
After a short bus ride from Santiago, we used Uber for the first time in our lives because Siu recommended it in Santiago, so we wouldn't have to walk through the unsafe part of Valparaiso or take public transportation. Using Uber worked great and the ride was very cheap, costing only about €3. In our accommodation, we were warmly greeted by the hostess, who ran a very small B'n'B with three rooms. She also warned us again to leave our valuables in the room and to take care of our things. Being prepared, we explored Cerro Concepcion in the afternoon, where we first needed to go to a laundromat. According to Google Maps, it was not far away, but what we couldn't see was that we had to walk up a very steep street to get there. However, we had a great view of the sea and could get the first impression of what Valparaiso is mainly known for - street art. There are either murals or graffiti on almost every house, wall, and staircase (and there are many of them). After we got rid of our laundry, we couldn't stop taking pictures. The piano staircase with a picture of Beethoven next to it, the rainbow staircase, various birds, and the black and white pictures by varasmackenzie with references to Valparaiso will stay in our memories. We also went to a viewpoint on Cerro Concepcion to watch the sunset, where we could see the port and the surrounding hills.

The next day, we started the day relaxed and took a free walking tour at 12 o'clock. This tour took us to the port, two funiculars (one up, one down), a lot of street art, different viewpoints on Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion, and the oldest and least safe part of the city, where we were advised not to take photos and to keep our phones in our pockets. It was great that we could also go to the roof of an unused market hall, where we had a view of the hills instead of always looking down towards the sea. Afterwards, we walked back to the starting point with the tour guide, and she gave us some tips for our onward journey to the north of Chile. After Siu had already recommended it to us, it was clear to us that we would make a stopover in La Serena on our way to San Pedro de Atacama.

After the city tour, we wanted to follow another recommendation from Siu and try Chorrillana. This is a typical Chilean dish consisting of fries, fried onions, beef, and egg. You get a large portion, which you share with several people. Since we were only two people, we could share, but not with as many people, so there was more than enough food for us. Near the restaurant, we also bought a USB-C memory stick so that we could copy photos from our phones to a safer place because constantly uploading everything to clouds is too annoying and time-consuming.

After finding traditional food and the electronics store in the less touristy part of town, we took a third funicular up to Cerro Concepcion. The use of these funiculars costs about 11 cents per person (100 pesos), and an employee opens a turnstile with a foot lever, allowing you to enter the cabin and ride up the mountain, hoping that the cables will still hold after 100 years. Up there, we explored more street art in other corners of the hill until we had to pick up our laundry that we had dropped off the day before. We found Valparaiso fantastic - everything was so colorful, at every corner, we could discover something new, and walking up and down the steep streets and stairs or using the funiculars was a lot of fun.

The only thing that didn't make us so happy was that it was quite cold at night. We are currently in late autumn here, and while we didn't really notice it before, we realized here that a heater and/or better insulation of the accommodation would have been beneficial. But luckily, we had warm blankets, so we could sleep relatively warm.

The next day, we took the 'Metro' from Valparaiso to Viña del Mar. The train is called the Metro, but it is actually just a train that runs above ground along the coast. To use the Metro, you need a different card than in Santiago. Thankfully, our host lent us one, so we didn't have to buy one this time. Viña del Mar is about a 30-minute train ride from Valparaiso and is a popular beach resort.

Our first stop in Viña del Mar was the Fonck Museum, in front of which stands a Moai from Easter Island. There are apparently only three Moai outside of Easter Island, two of which are in Chile (one here in Viña del Mar) and one in the British Museum. In the Fonck Museum, we found the part about Easter Island (or rather Rapa Nui) the most interesting. The stuffed animals on the first floor were rather creepy - we prefer to see the animals alive.

Then we walked to the sea, where there is a long and popular beach here in the summer. We walked along the beach for a while but weren't too impressed. Viña del Mar seemed like a classic tourist place on the beach with one high-rise hotel next to the other. Maybe we were also unlucky with the weather, as it remained cloudy all day. It is normal for it to be cloudy in the morning, but usually it clears up in the afternoon. On our day in Viña del Mar, it stayed gray all day, although the Norwegian weather website 'yr.no', which is supposed to be good all over the world, predicted otherwise. This probably made the rather bleak beach resort even more inconspicuous for us. We then walked past construction sites along a narrow sidewalk next to a busy road to the flower clock, which we found on the internet as a highlight. But here too, Viña del Mar was not so kind to us, as the clock hands were removed due to maintenance work.

After taking the Metro back to Valparaiso, we took the funicular up to Cerro Alegre again to explore it a bit more and once again realized that we like Valparaiso much better than Viña del Mar - even without the beach.

After another night in Valparaiso, we ordered an Uber ride from our accommodation, had to hurry outside because the driver arrived so quickly, and were then quickly taken to the bus terminal. There, we looked for a bus to La Serena.