Day 8 - Lima

My daughter stayed up and watched a movie last night, so I’m on my own this morning.  After an omelette - which seems to be the breakfast of choice in Peru - and tea in the bar, I hop in a taxi for a far-distant museum the desk clerk told me about.  He promised me Inca artifacts made of gold.  Unfortunately, I get there only to find it won’t open until 10:30, so it’s back to the hotel.  Money for nothing, but the taxi driver gives me a discount because the museum was closed.  (He may also have realized he told me it was the wrong time of day and I actually would only have had 20 minutes to wait, but...)  So the highlight of the trip turns out to be getting a glimpse of the U.S. Embassy, a true bunker - as is now the norm - near the museum.  At least I see what Lima looks like outside of downtown.

       I wake my daughter and we head off to find her a cup of coffee, back the same way as last night.  A zig to the left on a quieter street and a zag to the right and we stumble on a terrace (across from an - ugh! - Domino’s Pizza) where I enjoy a marvelous hot chocolate and she a mochaccino served by a waiter who speaks excellent English and French as well as his native Spanish.  And people-watching is fun in any city.  At one point an entire group of young people hefting huge drums walk past.  We’ll see them again later finishing up a street concert in front of a building in the restaurant district.

        Then it’s just around the corner to the Church of Santo Domingo (him again), which interests Andy because it houses the remains of St. Martin de Porres, the continent’s first black saint.  (I need to find out more about him.)  She seems to want to meditate or pray so I sit quietly and watch the people.  The old priest says mass and sometimes an old woman with henna hair sings a capella.  Her choice of repertoire is strange though for a Catholic church service.  As we step inside the church, she breaks into “Glory, glory, hallelujah” - but I don’t think it was meant for us.  Then later it was Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” with new Christian lyrics.  What a trip!

       The most fun is watching a three-year-old local girl escape her dad and go right up to the chancel area in front of the altar, which is one step raised from the rest of the stone floor.  She silently walks the entire width of the church, right foot up, left foot down, as if walking along a sidewalk curb.  Then she plops herself down on the prie-dieu on the far side of the altar.  When her mother appears beside the embarrassed father, whose frantic gestures the child has stoically ignored, the girl hops back diagonally from black marble square to black square, like the bishop on a chessboard.  I keep thinking of Christ saying, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” and I hope no one will chew her out.  No one does.

The Street of Restaurants

       After that, it’s lunch time and this time we do find The Street of Restaurants.  We look at them all, then settle on the first one, the historic one, El Cordano (1905), where all the presidents eat, living - as they do - right across the street.  Again servings are huge, and delicious. Neither of us can finish, but my breaded fried calamari are perfect. Flavorful and not heavy with oil.  No lemon required. 

St. Francis of Assisi

     We drop by the Monastery of St. Francis (of Assisi) to take a peek at the catacombs.  Unwittingly, we pay an entrance fee which turns out to involve a tour.  The guide does far better in English than I would in Spanish, but she keeps calling us “guys”.  “Guys, come!”  “Guys, look!” Her accent is thick and she hurries us along at a fast pace so the tour is pretty useless.  Still, the stucco decoration and woodwork are amazing, not to mention the library of 25,000 antique books rotting quietly away in Lima’s coastal humidity.  What a shame!

President's Palace

       The greyness of the Lima winter gets to my daughter so we head back to base camp where she sleeps it off and I pack.  Our separate flights are red-eyes (1:30 and 1:55 a.m.) and Amerigo is picking us up at 11 with his cab, so we opt for dinner in the noisy bar/restaurant of the hotel, noisy because it’s Friday night and this is the capital, but so delicious that we regret the previous night’s to-and-fro-ing on our quest for dinner.  My daughter chooses causas - a typical Peruvian starter of mashed potato and other ingredients, like little cakes - and a corn chowder; I have rice with shrimp.  And of course a pisco sour each - a small one this time - to toast the end of our week-long tour.

       We’ve seen so many beautiful landscapes and met so many kind, helpful, gentle Peruvians, especially those of the mountains.

Plaza de Armas, with Cathedral of Lima to left