Happy Birthday Ryan!

This will probably need to be several different posts. Ryan's birthday was May 13th, so I woke up bright and early to make him birthday pancakes before work and give him his gift...a 12 day vacation to South America! Admittedly this was just as much a gift to myself as it was to him, but I planned out the whole trip months ago to take him there for his birthday. Neither of us really knew what we were getting into with this trip and we ended up being completely blown away. It was an amazing trip and it's definitely on the list of places to go back to as soon as possible!

At LARCOMAR (the Cliffside plaza below our hotel)

We left a couple of days after his birthday and after several layovers and lots of flying, we made it to Lima, Peru Saturday morning. Luckily they let us check into our hotel super early so we could rest a little before hitting up the big city. This was also great timing hotel wise because we're now Platinum Marriott members so got lots of fun perks along the way ;) Our hotel in Lima was in Miraflores, right along the coast, so we had great views of the Pacific Ocean. Over all on this trip (other than Machu Picchu) I was pleasantly surprised to see how non-touristy this area is. There were a few Europeans that we noticed, but very few Americans anywhere, which was quite refreshing!

View from our room...don't mind the dirty windows.

After napping for a bit, we started wandering around the city. Just south of Miraflores in the Barranco neighborhood which is a little more artsy and colorful and a little less big cityish. It was a super cute area to wander through and get our first taste of amazing Peruvian food. Peruvian food, by the way, may now be my favorite food ever! I could eat ceviche, causa, and empanadas among other things all the time! And the pisco drinks were great too! The first place we stopped I actually had no idea what I was ordering (it was causa). I was imagining it might be a meat dish? turns out it was a perfectly pressed tower of sweet potatoes, avocado, and seafood delishiousness that immediately became my favorite dish! I'm so glad I randomly pointed at that menu item!

Barranco neighborhood

wandering down the waterfront cliffs

so much new construction going on...Brutalism is alive and well here

Amazing colors everywhere!

Causa...it is amazing...droooooool...

After wandering aimlessly around Barranco, we cleaned up at the hotel and caught a taxi over to the historic district of Lima on the east side of the city. It was a Saturday night, so it was quite bustling. We wandered around to some of the big churches, where we saw several weddings going on! They were all public churches though, so we wandered around them as the weddings were in session which was kind of strange, but a fun thing to watch!

Convento de San Francisco

Cathedral of Lima

Convento de San Francisco with a wedding going on...

Promenade

Walking back towards the center of the city, we wandered through an area that reminded me a lot of Rome. Lots of old architecture still but a promenade packed with people and lined with all kinds of stores and bright lights. It was a little too packed to really stick around too much, so we continued to wander on through. It was a bit far to actually walk all the way back to the hotel from the historic area, but there was one other sight I wanted to see the first night that was on the way and walkable, so we made our way over to the Magical Fountain Park! It is literally a whole big park scattered with super unique and artistic fountains! Talking to a Peruvian later, we found out that locals were actually pretty upset that the city was making this park because there's a large lack of water supply to local neighborhoods and what they do have is already really expensive, so making a whole park of water fountains seemed like a terrible idea. It was originally a free public space, but now they charge an entry fee (of about $1) which has left it pretty accessible to the general public while still recuperating all of the costs for the construction and now the money goes back into city infrastructure, so the Peruvians are happy.

Even late at night when we got there, the place was packed with what seemed like mostly locals. There were fountains of so many shapes and sizes, some with colorful lights or light shows. One was a tunnel that you could walk through. One was a water park that you could play in where the spouts were turned on and off and people hopped around it. There was a smaller water park area just for kids too. There were a few giant fountains were they were doing a fountain show to music at. It was so pretty to wander through!

 

After that little excursion we headed back to Miraflores for some dinner and getting ready for flying out again the next morning! More on our next adventures in the next blog!