Well, we made it from Toronto to Lima quite uneventfully.
We flew with Copa Airlines via Panama City and although we had to circle for a long time before landing in Panama and our next flight left almost an hour late, we landed in Lima just about 15 minutes late. Our Taxidatum driver was waiting for us and we made our way (slowly through the traffic) to our hotel in Barranco.
The 3B calls itself a B&B, but it is really a lovely little basic hotel, which serves great breakfasts (5 different options). We then headed just down to the corner to Cafe Sofa for a quick light dinner and by this time it was past 11 pm and time for bed after a long travel day.
Next day we were ready to explore a bit. We first went for a walk from our hotel over to Miraflores, to the "mall" at Larcomar, stopping along the way to take lots of pics of the beach from the the top of the cliff.
We had to pick up our train tickets for later in our trip from the PeruRail office in the mall, but they didn't open until 11 so we went for a bit of a walk of the street into Mraflores, which is the main tourist hotel & shopping district of Lima. On the other hand Barranco, where we are staying, is considered the "bohemian" district, where the good bars & restaurants (surprise!) and also arts & entertainment are located.
Anyway, after our stroll, and making several stops to try and find a working ATM (there seemed to be a network problem all day), we had a very good lunch in the mall at Tanta, where Carol had her first (of many I'm sure) Pisco Sour. In the afternoon we took a city tour in an open top bus with TuriBus.
The tour took us to Barranco--the main central part where we had not yet been--where we walked around for a while--and then up through Miraflores and San Isidro to downtown Lima and the historic district, where we again got off and walked around again and went for a tour of the San Francisco monastery and through "catacombs", the burial crypts under the church (no pictures allowed). An unbelievable number of bones just in the small section of the crypts that we were in. Then it was time to head home and of course it was the middle of rush-hour. Now traffic in Lima always looks like it is rush-hour. It is a sprawling city of around 10 million people--one third of the population of Peru--and we were only traversing the central 3 of 43 districts, but it seems like everyone else was too. The result is classic total gridlock. When a light turns green, cars are still blocking the intersection because they can't move because cars are blocking their next intersection. This despite the presence of multiple cops at most intersections who always seem to manage to wait just 5 seconds too long to stop the traffic from entering the intersections.
Anyway, we got back to Miraflores about an hour behind schedule and wandered back home. We then headed over to the central area of Barranco and wandered around looking for something to eat. We ended of going into a little pizza joint with a wood fired oven, called Forneria 850, and had a very good pizza. I know, come all the way to Peru for pizza! But we've got lot's of time. Wandered home and stopped for drinks at Isolina, which is one of the top rated restaurants in Lima and which we will definitely be going to later this week--the food looked fabulous!
Finding Our Way Around Lima
Wednesday, October 05, 2016
Lima, Peru
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