We had time to kill this morning before our flight to Lima so we visited the Casa Moral, one of Arequipa’s famed colonial houses. We also did some shopping in a market area called Fundo del Fiego. Kelsey bought a cute mirror that unfortunately the shopkeeper could not figure out how to wrap it up very well, so she’s had to improvise a bit with some laundry bags from the hotel!
We got into Lima and got to our hotel around 3:30 p.m. – another Casa Andina, this time in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. I got info from the desk about city tours since that seemed like a good way to make the most of our one full day in the city. I decided to do just the half day city tour so I could visit the Museo de la Nacion in the afternoon, while Kelsey opted for a combo full day tour that also visits the pre-Inca ruins at Pachamachac. Around 4:30, we headed to check out the markets near our hotel – we are on Avenida Petit Thouars, which turns out to be the major street for markets in Miraflores, maybe all of Lima. After some shopping, we walked about 20 minutes down Avenida Jose Larco to a shopping/dining comples on a cliff overlooking the ocean called Larco Mar.
Lima definitely feels more like a big city than Arequipa or Cusco! And more European as well. We got our first sight of American chains on the trip – KFC, McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut and even Chilis! For dinner, we ate at a restaurant called Vista al Mar, with a view of the ocean – although it was overcast so the view wasn’t all that great. Lima is definitely a bit of a bummer after the sunshine of Arequipa and even Cusco. Just very cloudy.
Dinner was good, although I can’t recall what I had! After dinner we walked back up Avenida Jose Larco since it was relatively early still and there were a lot of people out and about. We stopped for ice cream cones somewhere along the way and then proceeded to crash as much as we could at the hotel while some sort of karaoke bar blared outside nearby.