Aneya & Lauren: Vineyards.

Yay we made it!
Look how happy we are to finally be there!
The beautiful entrance to the vineyard
Big, French made oak barrels full of wine! Yes please!
Lauren was clearly in need of some booze.
The whole place was just so beautiful, I felt like I was back in Europe.
The original people were from France (but of course) and they lived here in the late 1800s. The mansion was hit by the earthquake, and is extremely old, so we weren't allowed in.
The lake is man made, and the sprawling grass and hills was supposed to resemble a Victorian English garden.
We tasted these grapes, which were older and therefore sweeter than the younger ones. Delicious!
I so wanted to run through the vines, like in the movies, but alas, I wasn't allowed. This was as close as I was gonna get.
The orange sticker means "Crazy American". I'm assuming, anyway....
These barrels had to be preserved at just the right temperature, and most had been sitting there for at least 6 months.

Lauren: Things in Santiago have been a bit tense since the earthquake, but still slowly settling. Aneya and I have gotten back to applying for jobs and just getting back to business-as-usual, when we realized that one of the amazing things about Santiago that we wanted to explore from the getgo were all the amazing vineyards around the city!

Aneya: The atmosphere in the city is definitely business as usual now, and we've been applying for jobs, meeting friends, getting back to life, basically. And one thing we'd been wanting to do was visit one of the many vineyards in the area.

Lauren: So I started researching a few days ago about local tours and found one a bit far out in Quilin. It was an hour on the metro, and a bus ride, and when we finally got there they said the vineyard was closed because of damages because of the earthquake. Major bummer. We were out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. No wine tasting. Great.

Aneya: That trip was loooong. Like, we were in the metro for literally an hour. It was hot, we didn't know where we were, and we were being turned down, at the gates of what looked like a beautiful vineyard. Car after car sailed through, but we were told to go home. Actually, we were told to walk 2 blocks, where we'd find another vineyard. Fine.

Lauren: So the colectivo we took told us all about another closeish vineyard. Why not? We're already out of the house, have nothing better to do that day, fine. So we went get on the train for another long period of commuting. Oh, the things we will do for a tour of a vineyard.

Aneya: We walked those two blocks to find the same damn vineyard, which was obviously closed! What is wrong with people? And why didn't it say on their website (which Lauren checked that very morning) that it would closed for 2 whole months? I mean, come on, Chile. Luckily we found the colectivo, who told us about yet another vineyard, farther away.

Lauren: Thankfully everything worked out. We were at a new gorgeous, gigantic vineyard -- Concha y Toro -- in no time. Sprawling lawns, gorgeous Victorian English style gardens, a lake. This was just the most excellent peaceful afternoon we could have asked for. And it came with two glasses of wine! A plus.

Aneya: The colectivo driver was a lifesaver. We got on another metro to the very last stop, got on another bus and finally- finally, made it to Concha y Toro. We were beyond relieved to find it open and willing to give us a tour (en Espangol, the English tours were done for the day) Fine. Whatever. Just get us a drink, please!

It ended being incredibly beautiful, the endless vines going on as far as the eye could see, a gorgeous Victorian English garden, an old mansion, and of course, French made barrels full of delicious wine! We were in heaven. The tour guide was pretty quiet to begin with (then again I'm used to uber chatty American guides who never shut up) but he surprised both of us in the end, when he began chatting us up-- in perfect English, no less! We sipped the incredibly strong (14% alcohol!) Cabernet Sauvignon, sighing happily to ourselves when we realized our day had turned out pretty damn well after all.

-- Aneya & Lauren