Sunday - March 22, 2026 Disembarkation at San Antonio and Santiago, Chile
We got up at 7:30 am, got ready and went to the MDR for breakfast. The Lido is always crazy busy on disembarkation day. Since we had a post-cruise package which included transport from the ship to the hotel, we didn't have to get off until 9:45 am so had plenty of time for breakfast. After breakfast we went back to our room, finished packing our carryon bags, then took everything and sat in the Pinnacle Bar area unti our disembarkation time. We picked up our large suitcases then took a shuttle from the ship to the terminal area. The transport to the hotel was a large bus, but since Mike and I were the last two people on we were not able to sit next to each other. Mike sat in an aisle seat next to some woman and I had to sit on a bench seat in the back of the bus between a man and woman. It was not a very comfortable 1 1/2 hour ride to Santiago. At least the woman I sat next to was friendly and we had a conversation most of the way to pass the time. We got to the hotel around noon and were able to check in, but our room wouldn't be ready until around 3:00 pm. We stored our luggage at the hotel - The Santiago Sheraton Convention Center -and had lunch at the hotel bar. Most restaurants close to the hotel were closed because it was Sunday. We shared a chicken sandwich with coleslaw and fries and it was pretty good. After lunch we walked outside a little bit, but it was very cold out so we didn't stay out long. The area around the hotel wasn't as good as the area next to the Sofitel in Buenos Aires. To get to any businesses or restaurants we had to walk 1/2 mile across several lanes of traffic.
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| View from hotel parking - you can see roads we had to cross |
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| Gran Torre Santiago - tallest building in South America |
At 3:00 pm our room was ready so we got our bags out of storage and went to our room. It was a really nice room with a spectacular view of the Andes mountains. We sat around in our room until time for dinner. We ate at the hotel bar and each got a chicken Caesar Salad, I had a chardonnay, and Mike had a beer. Dinner was good, but it took forever for someone to wait on us.
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| View of Andes Mountains from our room |
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| Sunset on the mountains |
We went back to our room for the night . Unlike Buenos Aires, there were no TV stations with English and we could not get closed captioning in English either. We were too tired to read so both were in bed asleep by 9:00 pm.
Monday - March 23, 2026 Santiago, Chile Day 2
We got up at 8:30 am. It was a sunny, nice day! We went down to breakfast at 9:00 am. The hotel served a really good breakfast; eggs to order, meat, cheese, pastries, fruit, and yogurt. When we finished breakfast we got ready for the day and caught the Hop On Hop Off bus from Turistik in front of the hotel. Since we were staying at the hotel we got a token that gave us 10% off our 2 day ticket. We started by riding the HOHO its entire route so that we would know what we wanted to do on the route. After making the complete circuit, we got off at the hotel to use the restroom and rest for a bit.
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Gran Torre and Andes mountains from the bus stop outside
the Sheraton Hotel |
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| View of Andes from the bus stop |
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| Drawing on outside of building in the Barrio Bellavista area |
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| Another drawing in the Bellavista area |
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| Constitution Plaza |
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| Municipal Theater of Santiago |
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| San Francisco Church |
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Sculpture "La Búsqueda" (The Search)
by Chilean artist Hernán Puelma Urzúa,
located in Parque Bicentenario in Santiago, Chile |
We got back on the bus and rode to stop 4, the Plaza de Armas. We found a place to get lunch at a local cafe. We managed to order a sandwich and fries to split. It was beef with tomatoes and avocado. It was large and delicious. We also ordered two Coke Zeros that were in bottles which are so much better than canned cokes. After lunch we went into the Metropolitan Cathedral and it was beautiful. We had planned to visit some of the museums at Plaza de Armas, but museums are closed on Mondays in Chile.
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| Equestrian Statue of Pedro de Valdivia |
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| Plaza de Armas |
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| Santiago City hall |
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| National History Museum |
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| Mike next to the Monument to the American Liberty |
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| Central Post Office Building |
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| Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral |
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| Inside the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral |
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Pipe organ inside the Santiago
Metropolitan Cathedral |
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Section of the ceiling in the
Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral |
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Main altar in the
Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral |
We walked around the plaza some more then got back on the HOHO and rode to stop 7, Santa Lucia Hill. The stop was across a 6 lane road from the park and we had to walk a block to a cross walk and then back to the park. We started by walking into a park area on a hillside to then took some really scary steps back to the side walk. We continued on the side walk and found the entrance to the Santa Lucia area. We walked up some stairs to the fountains area. We didn't go any further because it was too far and steep to the top of the hill.
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| Historic Santiago Fire Department Headquarters |
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Casa Central (Main Campus) of the
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile |
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| Mural at bottom of Santa Lucia Hill |
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| Neptune Fountain at Santa Lucia Hill |
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| Mary by the fountain |
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| Santa Lucia |
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| Santa Lucia |
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| Santa Lucia |
We crossed the road again and waited to catch the HOHO bus. While waiting a couple came to wait with us and told us that some thiefs had stolen the man's necklace off of his neck by just grabbing it and breaking it off. They were pretty shook up. We rode the bus to stop 8, went to a store to buy some snacks for the room, then walked to a liquor store to buy beer and wine. The liquor store had bars around the openings and you had to order through a slot in the bars. It took us a while, using Google translate, to get the workers to know what we wanted. After we got our purchases we figured out that the bottle of red wine needed a corkscrew to open it, but it was too late to change it. We took an UBER back to the hotel where we asked the concierge if they had a corkscrew we could use. They sent a waitress from the bar to open our wine and bring us two wine glasses. We were back in our room at 5:30 pm after riding the HOHO all day and walking over 3 1/2 miles. We had such a big lunch that we just ate snacks in our room for dinner. This was a really good day and the weather was beautiful.
Tuesday - March 24, 2026 Santiago, Chile Day 3
I got up at 7:45 am and made coffee in the room. At 10:00 am we both went down for breakfast. When we were finished with breakfast we caught the HOHO bus at 11:00 am. We rode the bus one final time to stop 4 for the Funicular which was included as part of the 2 day ticket. We rode the Funicular to the top of San Cristobal and walked around for a while. We walked some steps without hand rails up to the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception Sanctuary area then discovered there were handicapped accessible ramps. Glad we discovered the ramps because we didn't want to walk down those steps.
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| Entrance to Funicular |
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| Funicular |
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| Funicular |
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| On the funicular |
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| Mike on top of San Cristobal Hill |
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| Mary on San Cristobal |
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| Mike next to sign |
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| Mary in front of sigh |
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Statue of the Virgin Mary at the Sanctuary of the
Immaculate Conception atop San Cristóbal Hill |
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| Flower beds on San Cristobal |
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| Mural inside the chapel |
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| Front of the chapel with nun to the left singing |
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| Chapel of the Immaculate Conception |
After walking around some and visiting the chapel we took the cable car down the mountain to stop 3 of the HOHO. The cable car was also included in the price of the HOHO. We didn't catch the HOHO bus, but walked back toward the hotel then across the road to find something for lunch. We found a place that had 2 for 1 pizza. We got a medium ham, tomato, and black olive pizza and it was delicious. We should have gotten a small because even though we had leftover pizza for dinner, we ended up throwing away almost a whole pizza. We took our leftover pizza and walked back across the busy road to our hotel getting back to our room around 2:00 pm.
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| Mike on the cable car |
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| On the cable car |
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| View of Santiago from the cable car |
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| Mary on the cable car |
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| Another view from the cable car |
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| View of cable cars from the ground |
We spent the afternoon resting, taking showers, and packing for our flight the next day. We had leftover pizza for dinner and sat around until bedtime.
Wednesday - March 25, 2026 Flight to Miami, Florida
We woke up at 9:00 am and had breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast we finished packing all our bags then checked out of the hotel at 12:00 pm. We stored our luggage at the hotel and walked across the roads to town. We walked around about four blocks and back then got a sandwich and Coke Zero to take back to the hotel for lunc!h.
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| Sheraton Santiago - also shows 2 of the roads we had to cross |
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| Walkway over the river |
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| Mural on the side of a building |
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| Church of Divine Providence |
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| Fountain artwork |
We sat outside on the patio next to the pool to eat our lunch then moved inside to wait in the air conditioning for our shuttle to the airport. Our shuttle was scheduled for 5:30 pm. At about 4:00 pm I got a notification from American Airlines that our flight was delayed for a whole day! As soon as we got the notification I called American to reschedule our flight. There were no direct flights and the only one that worked for us had a connection at DFW in Dallas. i tried to just cancel the flight from Miami the next day and just take a flight from DFW to XNA but there were none available. It was spring break in the US so planes were booked. We got rescheduled on a 10:30 pm flight to DFW with a 2 hour layover before the flight to Miami. That wasn't a lot of time to go through customs, claim our checked luggage, recheck 1our luggage, and go through TSA. At 5:30 pm we took our shutlle that was arranged by Holland America to the airport. When we got out of the shuttle van an older man at the airport put our luggage on a luggage cart and took us into the terminal. I kind of felt that this was one of those deals that was a little bit of a hustle, but the man was nice, guided us to the check in area, and man handled our luggage for us. He made our check in process easier and I gave him our remaining Chilean pesos ($10,000 CHP which is the equivalent of $10 USD). After we had checked our luggage we made it through security easily and found our gate without any problem. We had a four hour wait for boarding so I bought a bottle of watter and some snacks for the wait. After we had drank some of our water we found out that we could only take 100 mL of any liquid in our carry on bags. so we had to chug our water before getting on the plane. We got boarded then there was a 30 minute delay so that they could unload some of the cargo. A lot of people had switched flights like we had and some plain cargo had been transferred so the plane ended up with too much weight. We took off about 11:00 pm for our 9 1/2 hour flight.
Thursday - March 26, 2026 Miami
We arrived in DFW at 6:30 am, about 30 minutes later than scheduled so we only had 1 1/2 hours to get through everything. Passport control was easy because of our Global Entry. We had to wait about 30 minutes for our luggage, but TSE pre-check was easy. We made it through TSA with about 30 minutes left to time for boarding. We had to change terminals so had to rush to get to our gate, but we made it. This was why we had gone to Miami to avoid a layover. Our flight to Miami took off and landed on time. Mike and I both had to sit in a middle seat, Mike one row ahead of me. It wasn't too bad though because we only had a 3 hour flight. We got to Miami by noon. We took an UBER to the Courtyard by Mariott Miami Airport west and got checked in by 1:00 pm. We ordered a meal from Chipotle through UBER eats. We got enough food that it worked for lunch and dinner. We bought wine and beer from the hotel and just stayed in our room until bed time. The past 2 days had been hectic and very tiring so we went to bed by 9:00 pm.
Friday - March 27, 2026 Flight Home - Mike's 77th Birthday
We woke up at 9:00 am and went downstairs to buy coffee and breakfast at the lobby restaurant. When we ordered our Starbucks coffee and breakfast sandwiches I mentioned that it was Mikes' birthday so the server gave us our coffee for free. After breakfast we went back to our room, packed our bags, then checked out of the hotel by noon. We hired an UBER to the Miami airport. We checked our bags then headed to TSA. The lines were not bad despite there being no DHS funding for 40 days. The media kept talking about hours long waits at some airports, but we never had to wait more than a few minutes. The airport was extremely busy because of spring break. Since we had 8 hours until boarding for our flight we tried to go to a lounge. However, all of the lounges had closed for day passes. There were even long lines into the lounges for people with regular passes. So we went to find our gate to sit and wait and found out that we had to go downstairs for our gate. We decided to stay upstairs until after we had eaten lunch/dinner at a restaraunt. We had a hard time finding any empty seats, but finally found two together. At about 3:00 pm we went to TGI Fridays to eat. We each got a Cobb Salad, Mike got a beer, and I got a wine. Our meal was good and eating killed about two hours. After we finished eating we went downstairs to find our gate. There were several gates downstairs and you had to go outside on a walkway then find where to get on your plane. It was not very pleasant waiting in that area. There were restrooms and a shop where you could buy snacks. I felt sorry for the people getting off of a plane because the up escalator was not working. They either had to wait for the small elevator or carry their luggage up some stairs. We have decided that we will try to not fly in or out of Miami Airport again. Not very nice. Our flight took off on time at 8:50 pm and we landed at XNA at 11:00 pm. We got our bags and walked to our car in the economy parking lot. It cost us $200 to park for 24 days. We got home by 12:15 am and were in bed by 1:00 am extremely tired from three days of traveling. However, this was an amazing trip. We really like our time in Buenos Aires and could have spent a couple more days there. The cruise was awesome, one of our favorite cruises ever. Santiago was good enough and the weather was great.
