Lima - Part 2

Well - I´ve just had two fantastic days in Lima. Got chatting to Renee at breakfast and we decided to take a run into the old part of town and see if the Plaza Amera was open - as it was closed due to the Apec Conference the other day I was there. Renee`s from Canada - OK - I won´t make any reference to Rush...

We caught the Collectivo into town and then had a look around. The square was sealed off, but you could walk around the outside of it - it reminded me a lot of Casablanca, with the archways to save having to walk in the sun. The main building is the Presidential Palace, with the Cathedral and Archbishops house on the other side. The Cathedral was closed all of the days I was there so I never got a chance to look in - but the rest of the churches were OK so there probably wasn´t much to see.

We then visited the Franciscan Monastery, church, and catacomb museum. It was really impressive - although they didn´t allow people to take photo`s (did they Renee? :-). They had a really large collection of books - a few of the books were for singing chant from and were about four feet by three feet in size. Under the monastery is the place they buried the bodies, and they reckon there`s the bones of about 25,000 people - which some archaeologist has sorted and counted. They even had a well that was 30 feet deep and full of bones. It was gruesome and cool all at the same time.

I`d been saying that I`d not seen much of the local food in Lima, and Renee suggested we tried the Cerviche - basically raw fish in lemon and lime juice, with some herbs and stuff. Luckily (for me) Renee speaks perfect Spanish, so was able to get a local recommendation from a policeman.

Here`s a pic of us in this tiny place with huge plates of food, and another one of the actual food. The stuff on the left is corn - the pieces of corn here are the biggest I`ve seen. The orange stuff on the right is sweet potato mash, and the rest is raw fish - crab, something I couldn´t identify but which was great, large prawns, squid, calamari rings. It was awesome. Really fresh - and fairly cheap.
















After lunch we headed off to the Inquisition Museum - the Spanish tortured the Peruvians on and off for 250 years if they did stuff they didn´t like - you can´t really imagine it going on for that long. All of the methods were totally gruesome, and very imaginative. Basically - you always ended up confessing, and then got killed in the main square. It´s amazing the church is still so popular after all of that. The tour was in Spanish - and I was able to work some of it out from the pictures and the rest Renee filled me in on.

A quick wander around, and we found ourselves in St Martin`s square. Some guy from the City wanted to honour his wife, so had a statue made of her - asking for a ring of flames around her head. As the Peruvian word for Llama is very similar the artist got confused and decided to check if they really did want a Llama. The guy told him to just get on with it, so he stuck a Llama on her head. Here´s a great pick of the statue and said Llama:



Having had a good look around we headed back to Miraflores. In the interests of keeping the food theme, we walked down to the sea and had Sushi - followed by Pisco Sour - which is a cocktail made from rubbish wine which is distilled into Brandy and then made into a cocktail. It´s a bit like a Margareta - you can read all about it here.

It was late when we got back - and I headed straight to bed and slept solidly for an hour, and then woke up and lay awake all night. I should have said in my previous blog that I´ve hardly slept since I left London - although I don´t feel tired at all. Not sure what`s going on - but it`ll be interesting to see what happens with the sleep thing - I´ll keep you updated for all of you who`ve had to endure my constant sleep updates :-).

I got up fairly early, had breakfast, and then headed to the coach station to buy a coach ticket for my next destination. A quick Starbucks, and I headed back to the place to meet Renee and a load of other people staying at the place for lunch. We ordered - the food came - and mine had chicken on it. So I ate it. It was OK I suppose. But the fish and even more Pisco Sour was great.

Hung around for a bit having a drink, and then said goodbye to everyone and headed off.

Well - that`s it for know - I´ll be off the radar for a while, but will return...just trying to leave it on a cliff hanger :-).

Take care.