Full day in Lima
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2011
1
11
12
Trip End
Jul 18, 2011
Where I stayed
Lima, Peru
Sunday, July 17, 2011
We didn't really know what to expect, so we just told the cab driver to head to the Plaza... He dropped us a block away due to a bunch of closed streets.... another parade!
The parade wasn't quite as interesting as Pisac - beautiful bright costumes, but a little too sterile - no one looked happy... the weather was soupy. Apparently it's always like that.. gloomy and misty, but never rainy. The plaza was OK - a bright yellow gov't building certainly helped provide a little color along with the parade costumes.
We decided to follow our book's advice and head to the torture museum...El Museo de Inquisicion y Congreso. We joined a tour that was all in Spanish ... although we speak OK Spanish, the words about the inquisition were too tough so we wandered away. The interesting thing about that museum was that the building actually housed the prison cells underground and you could walk through the subterranean passages to get a real sense of what it was like. The top floors have been converted, but the passages are still as they were, narrow, dark and damp. Ew...creepy.
Afterwards, we wandered to Chinatown to see the biggest Chinatown in South America- ok... cross that off the list. We weren't in the mood for Chinese so we meandered back towards the main square to the Museo Banco Central de Reserva del Peru. I really liked that museum because it was in an old bank - the vault downstairs still had the original door and housed SO much gold... I was mesmerized. It was free to enter and well worth the half hour it took to see everything.
Miraflores was next - we heard it was the hot neighborhood. I really wasn't all that impressed. Maybe it was the weather, but everything just looked tattered, even the fanciest parts.
Another parade was happening in Miraflores, and we got ourselves stuck in a park in the middle of it! So we popped into Media Naranja Brasileiro, a cool outdoor bar/resto showing a Brazil & Paraguay soccer match. It was a pretty awesome game - Paraguay beat Brazil in PKs... Brazil missed a ton which was a big upset, but good for Peru (slated to play the winner of the Brazil/Paraguay match) - Paraguay won and the crowd was mixed with emotion. I pretended to be happy although I had no idea what was going on. A TV crew bombed over to me and threw a light on my face to interview me about the game. WHOA....I have no idea what the reporter said to me, so I just said... "Viva el Peru!" - good enough. I wish I had found the newscast... I must have looked like an idiot. I think they thought I was Brazilian or something.
Once the parade cleared out, we were able to move along and grab a cab back to our hotel. I was dead set on going to the park with the water fountains at night. The Parque de la Reserva's El Circuito Magico del Agua was on my short list for Lima. Mike was game to literally throw stuff down and turn around to go back out. It was our only full day/night in Lima so we had to make the most of it. There were water shows on the hour and we timed it up perfectly to visit some other fountains before the main event...
The water show consisted of a giant row of fountains blasting straight up in the air to the rhythm of Peruvian music. In addition to rhythmic spraying, the lines of fountains stay up to provide a soft backdrop for a hologram show featuring traditionally dressed Peruvians dancing to the music... it was pretty interesting and probably only lasted 15 minutes, which was perfect.
We stayed about 90 minutes total which was more than enough time. It was kind of chilly out, so we weren't interested in getting wet but we did walk under a fountain archway which was neat.
The cab waited for us and then dropped us back at the hotel.
We walked to Antica Trattoria for some Italian food .. it was cozy and we're definitely recommend it!
Here is the info:
- Address: Av. San Martín and Av. Ugarte, Barranco, Lima, 04
After dinner we walked around Barranco and realized nothing was open except for some cheesy and totally empty nightclubs - so we called it a night.
