Wow, is time ever flying! I am way behind. Of course it doesn't help that I have been preoccupied trying to keep track of the Blue Jays (can't even get a streamed radio broadcast here) and trying get my bank card to work--turns out TD Bank blocked my card due to "suspicious pattern"; they really have a bad algorithm for fraud detection but they won't let you put in a travel notice anymore, and they don't notify you when they put a hold on your card. Anyway, our second day in Lima was a "take it easy and eat" day. After doing some blogging in the morning, we wandered around Barranco a bit and then tried to find a little restaurant called Arlotia that we had passed the night before on our way back from pizza. Well, going in the daytime and by a different route we (OK, I) got all turned around and couldn't find our pizza place or the oone we were looking for and went around in circles for a while until we realized that we had actually passed them, on the other side of the street, on the way from our hotel to the Barranco main square. We found it eventually and it was worth it. The food is Basque-Peruvian fusion and we had a wonderful lunch of assorted tapas and croquettes. A little more wandering and then home to get ready for dinner at Isolinas. Dinner was tremendous. They serve traditional Peruvian food, so lots of organs and entrails on the menu but also lots of other great stuff. Entrees are for 2 people, but we had them make a half order of one of them to split for an appetizer. It was lomo saltado, a sort of beef stir-fry, but that doesn't really describe it and how tender and perfectly cooked the beef was. For our main course, we had braised short ribs with rice and stewed white beans. It was about half a side of beef on the ribs! It was delicious, though, and we did manage to get through it. It was a good thing we had a bit of a walk to get home.Next day, we took a bus tour to Pachacamac, an Incan and pre-Incan archaeological site just south of Lima, which ws very interesting. Then we had another great meal (beef tenderloin, paella), at La 73, just around the corner from our hotel. Then the next day, Friday, we packed up and headed for the airport (through the most horrendous traffic) for our flight to Cusco. From the airport in Cusco, our Taxidatum driver took us straight to Ollantaytambo, in the Sacred Valley, a 2 hour drive. (We will stay in Cusco later, after we go to Machu Picchu.) We are staying at the Intitambo hotel, a nice little hotel with amazing views from it's roof-top terrace and, right now, I am sitting in a cafe overlooking the main square and the spectacular mountains in the background.