Finally in Lima

Rather than landing in Lima late Friday night like we had planned...we got there in the wee hours of Saturday morning. We stayed in a guesthouse and our hostess was the sweetest! She was much more pleasant than I would have been at 3:00 in the morning! We got settled as quickly as possible. 

Our first night, we stayed in the historic center of Lima. We had one primary reason for staying here, but I'll get to that in a bit.

We got up and enjoyed our free breakfast (Josh did a great job of finding us places to stay and everywhere had free breakfast!). Once we paid for our room and made arrangements to keep our bags there while we explored, we made our way out to take a look around. 

There are many beautiful historic buildings in this area! 

We were anxious to try some Pisco Sours, so we went to a place Josh found in our guidebook. It was a hotel cocktail bar/restaurant. 

 The hotel was absolutely gorgeous!

 We each ordered a different Pisco Sour so we could try different ones. Looks are very deceiving! That tall, pretty one? Yea, it was everyone's least favorite. We had a Classic, a carbonated one, the Machu Picchu (the tall, pretty one) and a coca pisco sour. We all agreed that the classic was best.

 So pretty!

THIS was our main reason for staying in this area of Lima. San Francisco Church! There are lots of old churches and cathedrals with catacombs underneath them, but you just hear about them. You never get to see them (at least we haven't been able to). This one is very different! We got to go down into the cellar and see the skeletons of thousands of people. It was a really unique experience and I'm glad we got to do it! Unfortunately, we weren't able to take any pictures inside, but here's one I found online...

Isn't that crazy!

Dave took this picture. There were hundreds...maybe even thousands of pigeons flying over us. Talk about scary!

 We saw all these cops march by. Pretty cool.

Taking pictures of the police.

Our first ceviche. Very tasty, but the best was yet to come!

 We saw this parade on the way back to our room.

 Some people stopped and posed, others took pictures of us taking pictures.

We got back to our room and the hostess of the guest house called a big cab for us. There were 4 of us with 4 full sized suitcases and carryons, so we needed a van. The first van she called got stuck in horrible traffic and said they couldn't make it, so she ended up calling 2 cars for us. She was so sweet! We FINALLY made it to our next stop...Borranco.

Here, we stayed at D'Osma Bed and Breakfast, which we highly recommend! They had great free breakfast (amazing scrambled eggs!), the staff is great and the location is wonderful. We stopped at a place nearby for Happy Hour. Turns out, they didn't have the Happy Hour specials, but we got an appetizer and a Pisco Sour to share anyway, then we made our way out to dinner. We found a brewery, so of course we went there for dinner! They had all the beers you would expect to find in an American brewpub (which is not the norm here...at least not yet, the craft brew scene is growing in Peru too!).

Peruvian Wings. The wings were quite tasty, but the dipping sauce was amazing! I have no clue what all is in it, but I'm determined to replicate it somehow. All I know is that the base was cream cheese, which is amazing to me since I hate Bleu Cheese and Ranch...let the experimentation begin!

 Here are the beer selections. 

 We split a beer and a sampler, split a pizza with Dave and each bought a shirt and we only spent about $50 USD. In the states, the shirts alone would cost us that much!

Hubby being silly

We walked around for a bit then we went back to our room to crash since we had an early morning for our cooking class.