Vina Del Mar Casino- Culture

Today was our day of relaxation, we all slept in until mid morning, where we decided we had eaten enough of the hotel breakfasts, and googled where to find breakfast in Chile. We all had settled on a small cafe by the name of the Wonderland Cafe. This was a cozy dinner with all sorts of foods from sandwiches to great coffee. We didn’t pick that restaurant for the normal food though. We went there for the dessert. Online, we learned of something called Chocolate Torte, a cake without flour that kind of looks like a giant brownie. Supposedly, the Chocolate Torte at Wonderland Cafe was amazing, and it didn’t disappoint. We finished the entire cake in under ten minutes, and debated about ordering a second to take with us. The cake was chewy on the inside with a kind of crunchy slim outside layering. It tasted like a giant brownie without a specific hint of a doughy taste.  
After breakfast, we finally decided on where our destination for the day would be. After a short period of arguing, we decided to travel to the Vina Del Mar Casino, which was about an hour and a half away from Santiago. It was already about twelve o’clock now, and daylight was wasting, so we hurried to call an uber, struggling to find one that could carry five people comfortably for an hour and a half. The car ride was decent. The only thing that made it okay was the fact we were in another country and our driver was very eager to tell us all about Chile. This would have been irritating, but due to the fact we didn’t already know much about Chile, it was helpful to have a small refresher course on it’s history. The driver mentioned how the casino was on the coast of Chile. We hoped that meant maybe we could visit the beach before the casino. This indeed turned out to be true, because we didn’t want to head over to the casino in the middle of the day.
Image result for beach at vina del mar
The beach was an amazing refresher after sitting in the uber for a while. We immediately ran out to the beach to get in the water. It was the perfect temperature (though Jake said it was too cold). We decided to find a pickup game of sand volleyball, it wasn't too hard to find. We played that for a while (got beat pretty badly) then decided to hit the casino.
The casino looked amazing at night, lit up in all it's glory. We decided we’d spend some money. Blackjack seemed like our best bet because we all knew how to play. We played a couple of rounds with a friendly dealer named Roy who told us about the casinos history. It's a 1930s era casino and it sure looks the part.  After blackjack we went to play some poker. Jake did the best out of us winning over $500 which he immediately lost on slot machines a couple minutes later. Luckily no one lost any significant amount of money and we had a lot of fun. Soon we decided to get some dinner. We went to Santabrasa and enjoyed perfectly cooked burgers and steaks which we absolutely adored. It was fair to say that might have been the best meal so far on the trip. We felt another beach trip was in order so we went back down to the beach for a final dip before we needed to be back.

Once it got way too late to be out, we called an uber to get a ride back to the hotel. On that ride we were nodding off to sleep but the other people awake wouldn't let that happen. Back at the hotel we once again crashed on our beds immediately and fell into the soundest sleep we’d had on the trip.

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