After a comfortable overnight flight with only one hour time-difference, we touched down in the early morning in Lima and checked-in in our hotel in the relaxing district Miraflores.
Lima doesn’t have any blockbuster sightseeings and still has some reported safety issues, therefore many tourists skip it completely and immediately continue to Peru’s many other sightseeing highlights. As we have an abundance of time (and a multiple entry 90 days visa) , we decided to hang around for a while and start acclimatizing to Peruvian food and lifestyle.
Miraflores is the most recommended district for living and tourist-staying and it lived up to its reputation and name (mirar = to see, flores = flowers). We enjoyed our first two days just strolling around the neighborhoods filled with nice parks, cozy cafes and beautiful buildings. After admiring one of the houses for too long an old lady came running after us, asking if we want to rent a room! For $3 a night a very tempting proposition, hadnt we already booked our hotel.
Quirky fact: Peru is the first country I have been so far where consistently the one-hole shaker is used for pepper and the multi-hole one for salt:
By coincidence we came past a nice little park with a yoga group. The notice board announced several yoga and Tai Chi activities, which inspired me to come back in the morning for my own session
Lima’s historical center is definitely worth a day visit with impressive squares and several nice colonial buildings and churches.
Funny story: You see the statue in the middle of the square? For the woman in front, the builders were asked to put a crown of flames (flame = “llama” in Spanish) on top of her head. Seems nobody bothered to double-check the double-meaning:
Yang Ke enjoying her first Ceviche (fresh raw fish with lime and spices) and me my first local cerveza, in a typical colonial wooden balcony.
Here the previous train station, beautifully restorated to a library dedicated to Peruvian authors, among other Nobel prize winner Maria Vargas Llosa
The city center starts to evolve to the usual shopping streets full of chain stores, but is now still intermixed with undeveloped “rustic” streets of a different kind of lifestyle
Thanks to the newly opened first “Metropolitano” line (a bus rapid transit system), getting around was super easy and we didn’t have to worry about all the taxi safety warnings.
Overall we had a great start into Peru and dont mind coming back to Lima, in particular to explore more its rich culinary and cultural offering.
Quirky fact: in Peru the government does not fund firefighters. All firefighters are volunteers and depend on donations!
In the yoga / taichi park we did see a poster with a little chinese girl practicing Fa Lun Gong, and were stopped by a book-reading local at a bench telling us the benefits of practicing FLG….
I went to the same restaurant! 😀