Lima

Our tickets flying out of Houston were originally for Sept. 11th.  We found out about the terrorist attacks when we arrived at the airport that morning.  Needless to say, we didn't leave that day.  After a lot of stress, we were able to rearrange some of our trip and fly out a week late, on Sept. 18th.

So the morning of Sept. 18th, we flew from Houston to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Lima.  Our plane landed at around midnight, and we were met by a representative of our hotel.  After an "interesting" drive to the hotel (those drivers are insane!  Plus, we were having fun trying to understand the billboards, looking at all the neat buildings, and getting used to the idea of being on another continent), we arrived at the Prince Hotel.  Lima is certainly a busy town!

So our second day (Sept. 19th), we had a private guide that showed us all around the town (we chose Inka Natura as our tour company because it's owned jointly by two non-profit conservation groups, and all net proceeds go towards preservation).  We drove around the historic district and saw the Plaza de Armas, where the Cathedral and President's Palace was located.  Then we saw the Miraflores district, right on the ocean. 

 

The church was built on the old site of an Inca temple (when the Spanish invaded the country, they would destroy all the Inca temples and build churches on top of them).  This particular cathedral houses the remains of Francisco Pizzaro (at least they're pretty sure this time they've got the right body).  The inside of the church is decorated in beautiful mosaics, with a lot of it dedicated to Pizzaro's conquest of the country.


 

To the left of the Cathedral is the old Archbishop's palace, famous for it's Moorish-influenced balconies.

 

The Palacio de Gobierno is also in the main square.  Unfortunately, we missed the changing of the guard.


 

Here we are at the coast.  You can see the pier in the background where we ate dinner.


 

After our personal tour, we returned to our hotel, where we started to get ready for our evening out.  We arranged for a night tour of Lima, where we were able to see all those beautiful sites lit up for the evening.  Afterwards, we had dinner at a very nice restaurant looking out towards the ocean.

 

Here's a postcard of the restaurant we ate it. (You know it's fancy if they have postcards of it) :)