Lima, Peru

Lima consists of a bunch of different districts. We had choosen to stay in San Isidor but we learned that Milaflores or Barranco would have been better choices.
In San Isidor you find the finance and embassy area together with a lot of very nice buildings (mostly privat) and a lot of beautiful avenues. Milaflores is the touristic hart of Lima.
Numberless Hotels, Hostels, restaurants, bars and shops – here is where the musik plays (as we say in Austria). In Barranco is where lot of artists live. Here can find by a lot of grafiti.
This districts are quite save – according to a lot of people we asked (Hotel, Taxi, Tourist Info,…) – anyway you should not show your expensive equipments – just to be sure.

Lima, the City
Lima has more than 10 Million inhabitants and the trafic is accordingly. A drive with the car from San Isidor to the pacific should done within less than 10 Minutes. We did it several times (different hours) and need always at last 30-45 Minutes!

Eating
Lima is – not only in south america – know as the city with the best national and international cuisine. You will find everything from peruan dishes, meat, sushi, chinese food,…

One day we went to Punto Azul Restaurant in Milaflores which is know for it´s seefood. Especially the “Ceviche” (raw fish in lime juice) was incredible.

Another day we visited the Chinese restaurant Chifa Royal in San Isidor and we never had such a good buffet in an Chinese restaurant befor.

Near our hotel was the restaurant El Hornero which serves mostly grilled meat and the pepper steak was the best I ever eat. Also the salat was amazing. If you order salat in Argentina, Uruguay and Brasilia you will get it only with olive oil and maybe with acid (not everywhere!!), so we was not awaiting something special but it was unbelivable good here!

This where only some examples. Even if we eat only one time beside the breakfast per day, I think we leave Lima with another kilo or two more on our rips.

Supermarket
How may supermarkets are counted as tourist attraction? I know only Harrods in London and KDW in east-Berlin. Now I know at least one more: Wong in San Isidor.
Wong does have several outlets at least in Lima (we saw 3 or 4) but that one in San Isidor was an amazing experience – especially after the most supermarkets we found on our trip (where you often have no space to turn around if you carry a backpack).

They had a very large area for vines, frutes and vegetables and much more. If you just count the size, you may say: Carrefour or Metro are sometimes even bigger but this is not was makes Wong so special.

Every meter or two you will find an employee offering tasting, filling up fresh things or just asking if they can help you.
The area for fruits and vegetables was incredible. Here you find black corn, tens of different potatoes and much more.

Arriving at the casier you have to empty your shopping cart because it was not fitting between the casiers. As soon it was empty an employee was collecting it. As soon as the casier had scanned the things, another employee put them into bags. After paying we got asked if he should bring our things to our car.
Bad thing: we had no (rental) car in Lima, so we had to carry them by ourselves to our hotel ;( .

A walk from San Isidor to Milaflores
One day we decide to walk from our hotel through San Isidor and Milaflores to the pacific. The reason was that we have seen so many beautiful buildings and churches when we passed by within cars.

In front of our hotel where some palms and after a few buildings of the finance district…

… we arrived at basilika De La Virgen Del Pilar where a service was when we came in, so we had not chance to have a closer look.

After a small place with nice houses…

… we entered the park El Olivar with have a lot of olive trees there (which I love very much). Middle in the park you will find some nice houses – we are sure they belong to the poorest in the city ;-).

After the park we hide to Av. Arequipa where we know that there are a lot of nice buildings …

… and we end at the circle Óvalo de Miraflores where we go into a swiss coffee to relax a little bit. Unfortunately we where not able to ignore the Apfelstrudel which remembers to home.

Next was park Kennedy and the church Virgen Milagrosa where a service started when we just arrived. Bad luck again, so we had only a very short look.

Now crossing Milaflores directly to the pacific. We bought some postcards and asked where to get the stamps for it. As they told us, we have to go to correos (post office) we fear it could be as complicated as in Buenos Aires, but we had luck. No silly questions, no need for presenting passport, no waiting, just getting what we ask for!

Arriving at pacific we entered the shopping center Larcomar which is below a park integrated into the cliff offering the view over the pacific. Problem is, it is winter and Lima is almost 6 months below clouds.

So we want to go to the coastline not just seeing it form the top. We walked along the promenade and found a way down – with a lot of stairs (it felt like tousends).

Now we where hungry, so we´d like to eat at La Rose Náutica but we had bad luck again. We where not willing to wait 45-60 minutes for a free table, so we go back to hotel with a taxi.

Lima Downtown
Arriving in downtown it was not possible to say in which city you are (if you do not see the peruan flag which is almost everywhere). It looks like and european city. Beautiful buildings, parks and such a lot of churches and basilicas we know only from Rom!

Plaza Mayor the Lima is impressing. On one side you find the cathedral and the cathedral museum. Next side is the main palace and the other two sides are also framed by palatial buildings.