Lazy Santiago Sunday

I’m determined to have a restful day. Especially after yesterday. Which was too panicky for my liking. Too much excitement. On reflection. Mosty self-inflicted.

But I’ll get to that later. If I remember.

An advantage of taking a flight a day earlier is that I get a full day in Santiago. How to spend it?

Markus is planning on vising the market. Me? A late breakfast and some lazing around in my room. I’ve been surrounded by lots of people for pretty much every waking moment for a week. Very nice people. But it’s good to be on my own for a couple of hours.

Following the restful theme, I don’t pull my arse out of bed until after 9 PM. And go upstairs for breakfast. There’s a rather nice view of a random bit of Santiago.  

A breakfast of bacon, scrambled egg, orange juice and coffee.

Hooray! They have bacon. Sadly, it’s weird bacon cut into little squares. The scrambled egg is OK. Decent fruit selection. Lots of sweet stuff that I pay little attention to. Well, no attention, if I’m honest.

A view over the roof tops of Santiago with the Andes in the background

I have time to look through my emails properly. Including a few from Sky. There’s one from Thursday. Telling me my Sunday flight was cancelled and asking me to change my booking. Fuck. I missed it totally. In my defence, Sky do keep sending me spam emails trying to flog me shit.  Making me pay less attention to their emails. I didn’t exactly have loads of time to check through emails, either.

Chris says he’ll pick us (me and Markus) up at 12:30. But will give us a more exact time later. Which, surprise, is exactly that. Later.

We’re off to Kross again since Markus has never been there. I was there just a few days back. No problem returning.  The garden is nice and the beers pretty good, for the most part.

Outdoor conical fermenters with sacks of malt.

There’s a quick walk through of the brewing kit. Then it’s out into the garden.

Pint of Maibock for me, a dozen samplers for Markus and Clausthaler for Chris. Poor bastard.

We also get some food. Deep-fried balls of something for me. Not too filling and pretty tasty. You can’t go wrong with fried stuff. And goes very nicely with my Maibock. 

Six sampler glasses at Kross.

I’m dead into beer and food pairing. In my experience, strong beer goes with meat, fish, seafood, curry, sushi and even salads. The stronger the beer, the better it matches with any sort of food. Imperial Stout, Barley Wine. That sort of stuff.

After ruling out a trip to a brewery even further away from Santiago, we opt for Flannery’s Geo Bar. Where they sell Chris’s beer. The owner is his partner at the brewery.

“Ron, do you want to go up the hill on the funicular?”

“I don’t really need to. We can just go straight to the pub.”

“Are you sure?”

Yes. I’m very, very sure.

Being pretty dark inside, m we choose to sit outside.  Despite it not being as warm today.

St, Patrick's Day posters in Flannery's.

What do I want? “I’ll have a Barley wine, please.” Even though I’m not eating.

“You always start with the strongest beer, Ron.” Chris says.

“No, I don’t. Sometimes it’s a pisco sour.”

Yeah? And what? I don’t see anything odd about starting strong. And staying strong.

We only have a couple of beers. Me and Markus. Chris is on zero alcohol Erdinger. Possibly the least bad option is a wheat beer, when you go alcohol-free.

Our destination is the other Flannery’s. The one I’ve been to before. On the way, we drop by this mall thing. Where Chis says there’s a pretty good offie. I’m happy to give it a whirl.

Santiago beer shop.

Chris knows the woman serving from beer judging. It’s mostly beer. Rows of dazzling cans, neatly arranged in the coolers. But I notice a few bottles of gin. Yeah! Artisan gin from Chile.  I’ve drunk enough of it during this trip. What does that tell me? Or you? That I quite like gin.

It’s a bit of a walk to the other Flannery’s, Flannery’s Beerhouse. Definitely, more than the “two blocks” Chris claims. He has a habit of reckoning any distance under five kilometres is “two blocks”.

The gates are chained up. It’s very closed. Seems the water in the area has been disconnected.

We trudge back again. Just as we arrive back at the first location, Martin Flannery, the owner, shows up. He sits and chats with us.

He has some interesting stories from his childhood in the West of Ireland. Working in his mum’s pub from the age of seven, he had first-hand knowledge of the two-cask system for serving Porter. One cask was placed by the fire, the other outside. You should be able to guess which was the high and low cask. That isn’t something I was expecting to learn in Chile.
 
We have a platter of meat and cheese. Plus a huge pile of chips.  Olives. There are quite a few of those, too. I’m drinking the Barley Wine again. Very nice, it is. So nice, I drink a few.

We don’t stay out too late. It’s only 9:30 or so when Chris runs us back to our hotels.

I fire up my laptop and . . watch Match of the Day 2. Drinking a couple of cans I’ve been given. The first is Bomba Trece Barley Wine. At 10.5% ABV, it would go great with food. If I had any.

The second is Cerveza Cuelllo Negro Foreign Extra Stout. It’s quite light, at just 8% ABV. Still tasty, though.

After setting an alarm for 6:50, I get my head down. It’s still pretty early. I need to get some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day.



Cerveceria Kross
Cam. El Toro 20589-20926,
Curacavi,
Region Metropolitana.
https://www.kross.cl 

Flannery's Irish Geo Pub
Encomenderos 179,
7550152 Las Condes,
Región Metropolitana.
http://irishgeopub.cl/