As we stepped onto the Lima-bound plane in Miami at midnight, I couldn't help but wonder if I'm getting too old for a night flight. But we managed a bit of sleep and when we arrived at the fancy Miraflores Park Orient Express Hotel in Lima at 6am, I felt rather pleased that we'd worked on Friday, and yet were ready to start our holiday the very next morning. We showered and changed in their business centre and then ascended to their top floor for a delicious buffet breakfast that foiled our diet but made us feel significantly better about being up so early.
After breakfast, we stepped out into white skies with a touch of grey - a particular feeling for which the only appropriate description is the Scottish word 'dreich'. Apparently Lima has this weather for over 8 months of the year - when it was established as the capital of Peru, it was a rare sunny month and the founders didn't realize what it was like the rest of the time. The slightly otherworldly ambience is carried on with the Pacific Ocean with its waves vigorously crashing onto the beach - and reflecting the white sky in a weird beach scene sapped of colour save for the intrepid surfers' wetsuits. We strolled along to Lacomar, an outdoor shopping centre cut into the cliff by the sea, and took refuge in Starbucks, the only open and warm establishment, til the clock struck 11, the shops opened, and we rushed to buy warm fleece jackets, having failed to note the midwinter nature of our current holiday destination, and then returned to the hotel to find our room ready for check in.
As regular readers of this blog know, we always book into a posh hotel for our first night of holiday and this was a nice example of the genre. With our minimal sleep the night before, we sank into the bed for a nap strictly alarm clocked to an hour... Then decadently changed to 2. At that point greed triumphed and we leapt from the bed and proceeded out into the city in search of lunch.
Miraflores is one area of Lima, and apparently the least stressful one. It's a fairly middle class area where Lima dwellers shop, eat and play. We found a restaurant called Mezze and were lured in by hummus etc, before heading up to the main square, or more accurately, to the main triangle. When we got there, in addition to a beautiful Colonial church, a million stray cats, a grassy mini-park and various art sellers, we were delighted to find a sunken amphitheater in the middle of the park, where a brass band played clearly popular tunes while hundreds of older locals, in what appeared to be a Saturday afternoon social tradition, sat on the steps watching, and leaping up to dance. Their dance style was both understated and quite joyful and the scene made us so happy that we stayed watching til we realized we should perhaps walk back to the hotel before it got dark.
Having changed, hadna drink in the hotel bar to live piano music, and identified a nice-sounding Japanese restaurant, Maido, we walked to dinner contemplating how whenever we go somewhere we tend to say 'Oh, this reminds me a bit of Spain', or Japan, or Ukraine, or wherever it happens to be. Lima, in contrast, reminded us of nowhere. The closest I could imagine was perhaps Iceland, but not really. Lima has a strange, otherworldly vibe. At first I mistook it for bland, but then I saw it was just subtle. And increasingly delightful.
Our dinner (one of the world's top 50 restaurants apparently) was quite nice if not remarkable, and we tasted our first Pisco sour - the national drink before wandering tipsily home to bed to watch a film on Roz's iPod before sleep.
The next day we indulged in another delicious breakfast - made all the better when Roz realized she could order pancakes, and we headed out to the main sight of Miraflores - Huaca Pucllana, a 2000 year old per-Columbian tomb and temple, standing incongruously in a residential suburb. As we walked past the main triangle, we found some of the roads had been closed to cars that morning, making way for a festive amalgamation of hopscotch players, skipping rope jumpers, volleyball players, and roller blade renters. It was absolutely charming.
At the temple, we enjoyed a quick salad for lunch, overlooking the ruins, while awaiting our private tour - the only way to see this site, which is mid-excavation. Our guide was lovely, and transformed our scepticism over the ruins - we thought they'd been poorly restored - to wonder - in fact what we'd assumed to be restoration was original. And we also learned that it never rains in Lima. Literally - the city has no street drains! And thus a temple built from vertical mud bricks 2000 years ago is still standing nicely bizarre. We also learned that the pre-Inca culture didn't worship the sun as it was based in Lima where there is very rarely any sun.
After our fun at Huaca Pucllana, we walked back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and got a ride to the airport and the start of our next stage of our adventure - Arequipa. This city in the mountains is known as the White City as all the buildings are made from white volcanic stone. A bad start when the hotel driver didn't turn up to take us to the hotel, but a taxi dropped us off without drama and soon we were wandering through the beautiful main square, or Plaza de Armas, as all main squares are known here, to Zingaro, a pretty restaurant where we had our first Peruvian food - quinoa tabbouleh for Roz, stuffed avocado for me. And then, amid psychosomatic altitude symptoms, yawned our way home to bed.
After breakfast, we stepped out into white skies with a touch of grey - a particular feeling for which the only appropriate description is the Scottish word 'dreich'. Apparently Lima has this weather for over 8 months of the year - when it was established as the capital of Peru, it was a rare sunny month and the founders didn't realize what it was like the rest of the time. The slightly otherworldly ambience is carried on with the Pacific Ocean with its waves vigorously crashing onto the beach - and reflecting the white sky in a weird beach scene sapped of colour save for the intrepid surfers' wetsuits. We strolled along to Lacomar, an outdoor shopping centre cut into the cliff by the sea, and took refuge in Starbucks, the only open and warm establishment, til the clock struck 11, the shops opened, and we rushed to buy warm fleece jackets, having failed to note the midwinter nature of our current holiday destination, and then returned to the hotel to find our room ready for check in.
As regular readers of this blog know, we always book into a posh hotel for our first night of holiday and this was a nice example of the genre. With our minimal sleep the night before, we sank into the bed for a nap strictly alarm clocked to an hour... Then decadently changed to 2. At that point greed triumphed and we leapt from the bed and proceeded out into the city in search of lunch.
Miraflores is one area of Lima, and apparently the least stressful one. It's a fairly middle class area where Lima dwellers shop, eat and play. We found a restaurant called Mezze and were lured in by hummus etc, before heading up to the main square, or more accurately, to the main triangle. When we got there, in addition to a beautiful Colonial church, a million stray cats, a grassy mini-park and various art sellers, we were delighted to find a sunken amphitheater in the middle of the park, where a brass band played clearly popular tunes while hundreds of older locals, in what appeared to be a Saturday afternoon social tradition, sat on the steps watching, and leaping up to dance. Their dance style was both understated and quite joyful and the scene made us so happy that we stayed watching til we realized we should perhaps walk back to the hotel before it got dark.
Having changed, hadna drink in the hotel bar to live piano music, and identified a nice-sounding Japanese restaurant, Maido, we walked to dinner contemplating how whenever we go somewhere we tend to say 'Oh, this reminds me a bit of Spain', or Japan, or Ukraine, or wherever it happens to be. Lima, in contrast, reminded us of nowhere. The closest I could imagine was perhaps Iceland, but not really. Lima has a strange, otherworldly vibe. At first I mistook it for bland, but then I saw it was just subtle. And increasingly delightful.
Our dinner (one of the world's top 50 restaurants apparently) was quite nice if not remarkable, and we tasted our first Pisco sour - the national drink before wandering tipsily home to bed to watch a film on Roz's iPod before sleep.
The next day we indulged in another delicious breakfast - made all the better when Roz realized she could order pancakes, and we headed out to the main sight of Miraflores - Huaca Pucllana, a 2000 year old per-Columbian tomb and temple, standing incongruously in a residential suburb. As we walked past the main triangle, we found some of the roads had been closed to cars that morning, making way for a festive amalgamation of hopscotch players, skipping rope jumpers, volleyball players, and roller blade renters. It was absolutely charming.
At the temple, we enjoyed a quick salad for lunch, overlooking the ruins, while awaiting our private tour - the only way to see this site, which is mid-excavation. Our guide was lovely, and transformed our scepticism over the ruins - we thought they'd been poorly restored - to wonder - in fact what we'd assumed to be restoration was original. And we also learned that it never rains in Lima. Literally - the city has no street drains! And thus a temple built from vertical mud bricks 2000 years ago is still standing nicely bizarre. We also learned that the pre-Inca culture didn't worship the sun as it was based in Lima where there is very rarely any sun.
After our fun at Huaca Pucllana, we walked back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and got a ride to the airport and the start of our next stage of our adventure - Arequipa. This city in the mountains is known as the White City as all the buildings are made from white volcanic stone. A bad start when the hotel driver didn't turn up to take us to the hotel, but a taxi dropped us off without drama and soon we were wandering through the beautiful main square, or Plaza de Armas, as all main squares are known here, to Zingaro, a pretty restaurant where we had our first Peruvian food - quinoa tabbouleh for Roz, stuffed avocado for me. And then, amid psychosomatic altitude symptoms, yawned our way home to bed.
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