Lima
Jan. 15
We had a very long travel day. After going to bed around midnight we were up at 3:30am to head to the airport for our 7am flight. We waited in line for almost 2 hours to check-in! If the flight hadn't been delayed we never would have made it. After checking in we still had to pay our exit taxes and go through immigration. We hopped on the flight as soon as we got to the gate and Matt was out cold within minutes. We hit some turbulence 15 minutes into the flight so I was wide awake. I got to watch the movie so I was pretty well entertained for half of the flight. On the flight between Iguazu and Buenos Aires the movie hadn't been in English (even though it was an American movie) so I was happy to see that this time it was.
When we arrived in Lima we saw a guy holding a sign for someone else in our tour (we recognized the tour company) so we asked if we could squeeze in for the ride to the hotel. He had space so we really lucked out and got to meet Katie, one of the Australian girls on our Peru tour.
Our first glimpse of Lima was not what I expected at all. I thought it would be a big city with tall, compact buildings and pretty run down. To my surprise, when we drove in I saw mostly 2 and three story buildings in pretty good shape and a lot of free-standing buildings. And I also saw a TON of American chains. ¡Qué horor! We had our very first Starbuck's spotting of the trip. There were McDonald's, KFC's, Chili's, TGI Friday's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's and on and on. And there is even a Payless shoe store and an Ace Hardware! I was in shock. We have only seen a small part of the city and I think we are in a pretty nice area so I'm sure (hope...there can't be these American chains everywhere, can there?) things will change a bit when we take the city tour tomorrow afternoon.
We met up with the rest of the tour group and our leader for lunch. We went to a touristy buffet with typical Peruvian dishes. I could tell it wasn't very high quality because the flan sucked. I am a flan connoisseur and you really can tell how nice a restuarant is by the quality of their flan:-) Anyway, they use a lot of potatoes in their cooking. I liked the beans a lot and I accidently ate some tongue in sweet potates. It tasted kind of like bad beef but the sweet potates were yummy. They also had stuffed red peppers which were pretty good and we were told this is a common dish. Also typical, is the pisco sour, which is a drink with lime juice, egg whites and a (of course) alcohol. We had one at the hotel bar before lunch and they weren't too bad.
We had a very long travel day. After going to bed around midnight we were up at 3:30am to head to the airport for our 7am flight. We waited in line for almost 2 hours to check-in! If the flight hadn't been delayed we never would have made it. After checking in we still had to pay our exit taxes and go through immigration. We hopped on the flight as soon as we got to the gate and Matt was out cold within minutes. We hit some turbulence 15 minutes into the flight so I was wide awake. I got to watch the movie so I was pretty well entertained for half of the flight. On the flight between Iguazu and Buenos Aires the movie hadn't been in English (even though it was an American movie) so I was happy to see that this time it was.
When we arrived in Lima we saw a guy holding a sign for someone else in our tour (we recognized the tour company) so we asked if we could squeeze in for the ride to the hotel. He had space so we really lucked out and got to meet Katie, one of the Australian girls on our Peru tour.
Our first glimpse of Lima was not what I expected at all. I thought it would be a big city with tall, compact buildings and pretty run down. To my surprise, when we drove in I saw mostly 2 and three story buildings in pretty good shape and a lot of free-standing buildings. And I also saw a TON of American chains. ¡Qué horor! We had our very first Starbuck's spotting of the trip. There were McDonald's, KFC's, Chili's, TGI Friday's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's and on and on. And there is even a Payless shoe store and an Ace Hardware! I was in shock. We have only seen a small part of the city and I think we are in a pretty nice area so I'm sure (hope...there can't be these American chains everywhere, can there?) things will change a bit when we take the city tour tomorrow afternoon.
We met up with the rest of the tour group and our leader for lunch. We went to a touristy buffet with typical Peruvian dishes. I could tell it wasn't very high quality because the flan sucked. I am a flan connoisseur and you really can tell how nice a restuarant is by the quality of their flan:-) Anyway, they use a lot of potatoes in their cooking. I liked the beans a lot and I accidently ate some tongue in sweet potates. It tasted kind of like bad beef but the sweet potates were yummy. They also had stuffed red peppers which were pretty good and we were told this is a common dish. Also typical, is the pisco sour, which is a drink with lime juice, egg whites and a (of course) alcohol. We had one at the hotel bar before lunch and they weren't too bad.
So far the people on the tour seem nice and fun. Most people are around our age with a couple younger and a few older. Abot 75% are Australian, 2 Canadians, and we've heard there is one more American coming. There are 15 of us in total plus our guide, Paloma.
After our long lunch (it was about 3:30 at this point) we walked over to a park nearby. They had some live music and lots of old couples were dancing. It was super cute and we enjoyed watching them. On Saturdays and Sundays the people congregate in the park and they have all different types of music. It was fun to hang out with the locals...or at least in the same place as them. Vendors were set up with their handicrafts and paintings so we checked those out as well.
That night we had drinks and then dinner with five others from the group. It was fun to get to know them better. I think we lucked out with a pretty good group.
posted by Jenny & Matt at 5:56 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home