Lima, Peru

Our first stop on our nearly four month journey through Peru was Lima, Peru’s giant capital city of almost 10 million people. Even though Lima is a huge city, most tourists hang out in a fairly small section of the city given that that’s where most of the action is and some of the other areas are not as safe. Lima used to be a somewhat dangerous place that people did not tend to visit, but from what we understand it’s changed a lot in recent years. We stayed in Lima for six weeks, in large part because it’s a good jumping off point for other weekends trips (of which we took two) and because as the trip goes on it’s nice to not move around as much. We stayed in two different Airbnb’s in an area of Lima called Miraflores, which is probably the most popular neighborhood for tourists. Much of Miraflores felt like it could be a U.S. city, and it was filled with lots of shops, bars, and restaurants.

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We had heard that Lima was an ok city, but we liked it more than we were expecting (even though it certainly wasn’t our favorite city we’ve been to). Lima is right on the water, and our favorite part of the city was the “malecon,” a very long path along the cliffs overlooking the water. Both of our Airbnbs were a pretty close walk to the malecon, so we often enjoyed going for walks here (especially at sunset). Davy has also gotten into running and found it was a great place to run. Another nice thing about Lima was that Shari was able to take some weekly private Spanish lessons due to the length of our stay and the fact that time difference allowed her to finish work a little earlier.

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Another great thing about Lima was the food. Lima has recently developed a huge food scene and has a few restaurants that are listed as the best restaurants in the world (however one decides something like that). We ate a lot of delicious food and splurged on one very fancy dinner at a restaurant called Maido that’s listed as one of the top restaurants in the world. Maido is a “nikkei” style restaurant, which is basically Japanese-Peruvian fusion. We had an incredible 12-course nikkei tasting menu which was definitely the best meal we’ve ever had (or realistically ever will have).

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Given that Lima is known for its food, we also decided to do a cooking class that came highly reviewed. It was less of a cooking class and more of putting ingredients together class (i.e. the instructors had pre-cooked/prepared some of the ingredients that we then put together or cooked), but it was still lots of fun and super delicious. We made four courses of classic traditional Peruvian food: causa (a cold appetizer with layers of mashed potato, avocado, and a filling such as chicken), ceviche (a fresh fish/seafood appetizer in which the fish is cooked by mixing it with lime and salt), lomo saltado (an Asian style beef and vegetable stir fry – there is a lot of Asian influence in the food in Lima), and picarones (a common street food that is basically sweet potato and squash donuts).

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Believe it or not, we did more than just eat in Lima! On our first weekend in Lima we visited the beautiful historic downtown which is centered around the Plaza de Armas (basically the main square that exists in nearly every South American city). The regal presidential palace is here as well as some beautiful churches.

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In this area there was also a very cool church and monastery called the Basilica and Convent of San Francisco. The church and monastery were beautiful, and there were also catacombs in the basement (we’re pretty confident the bones we saw were fake….). We took a really interesting tour, and the whole property was extremely beautiful.

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In addition to the old colonial buildings, Lima also has a site called Huaca Pucllana which is a giant series of adobe pyramids right in the middle of Miraflores. The pyramids and surrounding terraces were built by pre-Incan indigenous people and were important for both ceremonial and administrative purposes. Unfortunately you had to take a tour in order to visit the ruins, and the tour was pretty sub-par. However the site itself was interesting, and it was cool to be able to walk around ruins in the middle of downtown Lima.

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Although neither of these museums blew us away, we also visited two museums in Lima – the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Latin American Art (MALI). Both were located in very interesting buildings and were still neat to check out.

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Last but not least, our favorite neighborhood in Lima was a neighborhood called Barranco. Barranco is the next neighborhood over from Miraflores and is just a short walk away along the water. Barranco is known as the “bohemian” neighborhood since there are some galleries and artisan shops as well as a lot of beautiful street art and graffiti. Although Miraflores was nice, Barranco felt more unique and interesting, and we really enjoyed walking around here.

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All in all we enjoyed our time in Lima but felt that six weeks was certainly more than enough time to spend there. After Lima it was time to leave the coast and head to the mountains of Peru!

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SPICY BONUS PICS

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