Tag Archives: Family

31 reasons to love Santiago (and a few not to)

Posted on by under Family, Food, Travel

After spending a month in Buenos Aires in October, we realised the value of longer periods of stability while travelling, not only for Amber but also for Claire and I. As such we decided that following a busy couple of months of travelling in November and December, we would lay low for a bit, try to save some money and generally keep things quiet during January.

Santiago was to be our base. The capital of Chile is often overlooked by travellers who use the city as a transit hub in order to reach Chile’s main draws such as Patagonia or the Atacama Desert. However, the city has enjoyed something of a revival recently, boosted by government investment and a subsequent cultural boom.

We had spent 3 days in Santiago in December while on our way to the Chilean coast for Christmas and had rather giddily / drunkenly claimed that the city was the best place we had ever been to. I think it’s safe to say this wasn’t necessarily accurate and could have had something to do with the fact we knew we were coming back for a prolonged period in January. However, even in this short period, we saw a city that was buzzing with a vibrant, young edge. It immediately felt more down to earth than the somewhat haughty Buenos Aires.

And now, having spent pretty much all of January in the city, our opinion hasn’t changed. We loved it and thought the best way to celebrate our time there was to give people a taste of the sheer variety of things to do. So below is a list of not far off everything we did in Santiago, from bars and restaurants to cultural spaces and viewpoints. It’s all there.

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Sunset over Santiago on one of our first evenings in the city

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Wanderlust and Baby AirBnB Awards 2016

Posted on by under Family, Travel

AirBnB has been absolutely pivotal in making our trip affordable and practically possible. All but one of our 18 different accommodations so far have been booked through the site. 

Not only are hotels (and indeed often hostels) far more expensive but without the kitchen facilities available in our AirBnB properties feeding Amber and ourselves would be impractical / impossible. 

AirBnB has also give us the chance to meet local people and experience neighbourhoods and properties that would otherwise have eluded us. That is not to say it’s all been plain sailing. Putting your stay in the hands of a random punter instead of the professional services industry can lead to problems, some more serious than others. In this post we’ll look back on our accommodation for 2016 and pick out the best and worst that AirBnB has offered.

Award: Biggest property

Winner: Luna Azul, Punta Ballena, Uruguay

For our second week in Uruguay we stayed at this vast 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom detached holiday home (only affordable as we stayed here way out of season). It even had its own name. In a predictable reaction to its size and the quietness of the neighbourhood overall we decided it was haunted. At least we didn’t feel quite so alone if we imagined a ghost making use of the third bedroom.

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Amber helps give a sense of perspective in front of Luna Azul (ghost can be seen in top left window)

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Away in a stranger (country). Christmas and New Year in Chile

Posted on by under Family, Travel

If anyone has a better pun for the title please feel free to leave a comment.

The arrival of Christmas coincided with our arrival in Chile, having earlier made the decision that the Pacific coastline would be an ideal place to spend our first ever Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere.

We arrived in Santiago on 19th December following our flight from Mendoza. Chilean customs are known for their zero tolerance approach to bringing certain foods into the country. What you are and aren’t allowed seems to be a topic of much debate. As it turned out we lost dried kidney beans, raisins and Amber’s leftover lunch but managed to keep flour, curry powder (phew) and pasta.

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The view from our apartment in Santiago. That’s not a fresh morning mist obstructing the view of the Andes, it’s pollution

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Argentina – the best bits

Posted on by under Family, Travel

Fact: Argentina is utterly brilliant.

We have covered our 2 and a half months in Argentina in other postings (see links dotted throughout this post), so our aim here is to simply round it all up and jot down a few of our highlights. I say ‘simply’. We had some of our most precious moments of our trip so far in Argentina, so summing it up in a few short words is no mean feat.

But I’ll give it a go.

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Playing at Museo de los Ninos in our first week in Buenos Aires

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Banging, cuckoos and wine… our final days in Argentina

Posted on by under Family, Travel

When we made the decision to go as far south as possible on the South American continent (and indeed the world, Antarctica aside) one inevitable question was what happens after that. What goes down must come up, as they (don’t) say. What we noticed while planning the trip was a direct flight from that most southerly point, Ushuaia and Cordoba, Argentina’s second largest city located in the central / north of the country.

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Saying goodbye to the end of the world before our 4 hour flight north to Cordoba

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Confessions of the clumsy

Posted on by under Family, Travel

There have been a few constants during our trip despite all the regular change that comes from travelling. Amber’s love for her Bunny is one, persistently exceeding our daily budget is another. What we have also noticed is our relentless ability to break and lose things. Accidents happen but it is a small wonder that our AirBnB reviews remain consistently positive – we ascribe much of this to Amber’s charm as it most certainly isn’t related to the trail of destruction we leave in our wake. And if we’re not breaking things we’re losing them instead – no doubt when you try to carry over 60kg of stuff around South America some of it will go missing, yet we’re still surprised by our ability to misplace.

So, in a slight detour from our typical blog entries here we have listed just a subset of the various items we’ve either broken or lost since August. Note 1: don’t tell our kind AirBnB hosts. Note 2: a reward for anyone who finds any of these lost items.

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Speechless in Patagonia

Posted on by under Family, Photography, Travel

In what would be some of the most incredible days of our trip so far, during November we spent nearly 4 weeks in Argentinian Patagonia. We travelled to Bariloche, El Calafate, El Chalten and completed our Patagonian adventure at the end of the world, in the town of Ushuaia. For us, it is impossible to describe in words the wild beauty of this part of the world. So we won’t try. Instead we have compiled a photo diary showing some of the highlights from our trip. Enjoy.

Bariloche

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The views on our first few days were hindered by typically unpredictable weather. Here we are on the outskirts of Parque Llao-Llao

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A month in Buenos Aires with a baby (and one weekend without)

Posted on by under Dancing, Family, Food, Travel

We spent the month of October in Buenos Aires. Up until then we had been on the move for almost two months, and while the travelling was amazing, we were starting to feel like we might all benefit from settling in one place for a little longer than a week.

Our plan for the month was to hunker down, save some money, try to improve our respective Spanish levels (more on this in an upcoming post) and find some enjoyable child-centric things to do together. All of this, we managed to achieve (except the save the money part – did someone say budget?) with – to our immense delight – a few additional gems squeezed in as well.

Buenos Aires is pretty dreamy. Beautiful to look at, fun to be in, it is grand, individual and full of life. We spent the first few days strolling about, admiring the architecture, mincing around in parks and generally just enjoying the relative stability of knowing we didn’t have to pack up all our belongings again any time soon.

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The Rosedal – one of the many beautiful parks of Palermo

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What I Write About When I Write About Running

Posted on by under Running, Sport, Travel

“All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

I love running. I love the “homemade void” as Murakami (one of my favourite authors) describes it – for me that’s the place where worry disappears, thinking itself disappears and you just put one leg in front of the other and enjoy a peacefulness that I find very difficult to recreate in any other environment. I don’t believe I have ever felt worse after a run than I did before it, even after the grueling 20+ milers when training for a marathon (a marathon that injury ultimately prevented me from participating in).

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