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Day 224, 225, 226 - Lima, Peru- Sunday 27th, Monday 28th, Tuesday 29th May 2012
Eating our way around the lovely Lima - in short, that's my summary for our time in Lima! The longer version goes a bit like this…….
Lima was everything we didn't expect; if you read the guide books you could be convinced into completely skipping the city in fear of getting robbed, attacked etc. This however, couldn't be further from the truth - well in our experience anyway. We arrived at our quite amazing B & B in the Barranco area; basically the Kensington of Lima. I'd booked it months back when I'd read the guide book and had a moment of panic so thought I should book somewhere nice (and expensive - well for Peru) - it didn't disappoint and was probably one of the nicest places we've stayed so far. It had art work on the walls from the local gallery (which was absolutely gorgeous but bloody expensive!) and the bed could have fitted our entire family! It was fairly late by the time we got from Lima airport to our place so we went out for a quick wander and stumbled across a lovely little café which served gorgeous tasting little snacks and fresh juice so stayed there for a while taking it all in. First impressions of Lima are good!
After a yummy breakfast provided by the B & B we decided to venture out and explore the nearby Miraflores. The walk there was along the coastal cliffs and was beautiful - looking out to the sea whilst walking in perfectly manicured gardens. We eventually came to a little shopping centre situated right on the cliff; by god it was expensive and so we just window shopped before moving onto the main street that led into central Miraflores. After walking for a couple of hours we came across a little café called Manolo's that quite possibly had the best food window display we have ever seen! The sandwiches were five layers thick with every colour of the rainbow and the churros, well they looked divine (churros is a long doughnut covered in sugar and sometimes filled with different flavours). So we settled down for a café con leche (mega posh style given as a jug of warm milk and a jug of warm espresso) and several churros in a variety of flavours - to be exact vanilla, chocolate and the best by far, the dulce! They were so yummy I burnt my tongue on them as I was wolfing them down so quickly! After we continued walking up and passed some time sitting in the main square watching the millions of stray cats hunt down any spare food from passers-by before heading to the Peruvian market to have a look around. A funny hat and scarf combined thingy later and we decided to head to yet another restaurant to have something to eat. I'd love to tell you the name of what we ate but unfortunately it was all in Spanish and so we did our usual trick of just pointing at something on the menu and seeing what turned up! What did turn up was some kind of meat with potatoes, veg and rice and a nice beef type sandwich - the "point and see" technique has not failed us yet, although I think it help that we literally will eat anything! Back in our part of town, we wandered around the streets (very posh with some amazing looking houses and flats) before settling on yet another restaurant for a snack of causas's (potato salad things in sauces - yummy!) followed by a suspiro limena for me (a very tasty caramel meringue desert) and a coffee cake for Ad. We headed back to our place absolutely stuffed!
Today was the day to explore downtown (or central) Lima. Again, very stupidly, I took note of the guide book's dangers section and decided to leave my big camera at home - what a mistake! First off we got on the very efficient bus that took us directly into the main square in Lima - it even has an oyster type system where you just swipe a card! Once there we headed to the local market to see if they had any waterproof jackets or head torches for our upcoming trek to Machu Picchu - there was a lot of Ray Ban's but no jackets and so after strolling around for an hour or so headed back out towards the sights of Lima. We walked around and took in the lovely old buildings until we reached Plaza De Almas; as we walked into the square the most helpful policeman in the whole world stopped us and asked us something in Spanish, we replied to say we only spoke little Spanish and he then proceeded to tell us the history of the local area and buildings in perfect English - he even gave us a little map and marked the main sights for us! Brilliant! After taking in the main square we headed for lunch at El Cordano opposite the presidents palace which has been open since 1905 and apparently has served literally every Peruvian president. I had a yummy thick gammon sandwich and Ad had beef stir-fried with onions and peppers with rice. After wandering around the various sights and churches we headed back to our neighbourhood for yes you guessed it, more churros!! Again, we headed back to our place stuffed to the brim - seems to be a regular occurrence in Peru!
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