We woke up on Friday morning and had some breakfast - unlike traveling to Europe, no jet lag, so we were bright eyed and bushy tailed! I had a picture on here earlier of Trevor pompously eating breakfast, but I just accidentally deleted it. I'll post it again later.
After breakfast, we set out for some sightseeing. Here is a picture of the Plaza de Armas- the historic center of the city.
[click any photo to enlarge]
Note the grey sky. It wasn't rainy at all, but apparently winter in Lima is mostly marked by unrelenting grey skies. It's not too chilly though - we are comfortable in long sleeves.
We went to the archbishop's mansion, and Trevor was excited to see his first relics:
The middle one is a finger! We weren't sure about the other two - they looked like bone fragments.
The archbishop had some nice stained glass:
Here's Trevor in the archbishop's house:
We walked out of the archbishop's mansion just in time to see the changing of the guard in front of the presidential palace. I like this picture because you get to see the one guard actually guarding... and the rest of the guards marching around uselessly in the background. There was an American family sitting on the steps next to us and the father was trying to explain the ceremony to the son, finally falling back on, "It's tradition. It's something they've done for a long time and so they keep doing it."
On our other side was a Peruvian day care eating lunch and watching the guards change. When they were finished, the caretakers tied all the children together with a long strap and left.
Next we went into the cathedral itself - pretty beautiful:
So, this isn't the BEST picture, but worth explaining. We were down in the crypt and there was a skull in a case behind glass. I tried to take a picture of the skull, but wound up creepily superimposing my own face over the skull. While I am confronting my own mortality, Trevor is standing behind me rummaging through his bag.
Here is a view looking out into the Plaza from inside the cathedral:
We stopped for lunch at a cafe near the Presidential palace - here is a picture of the mirror overlooking the bar:
We went on a super cool tour of the San Francisco Monastery after lunch, but unfortunately, photos were prohibited. There was a really cool library, which we bought a postcard of for Mom, though we have neither written nor sent that postcard - sorry Mom. There were also some really creepy catacombs, which led to the decision that if we had a family heavy metal band, a really good name would be "Skull Pit".
On the way home, we succumbed to the Wellington family curse and found ourselves unable to avoid going into a book store to browse. I think I found a math book that my school used sometime in third grade. Here's Trevor:
We got back to the hostel and napped, and then went to a nearby shopping center to book flights to Cuzco. Originally, I had thought we would take the bus, but when we found out that it was anywhere from a 22-30 hour bus ride, suddenly the plane seemed more attractive. (For anyone who is doubting my bus riding street cred, check out the entry from last spring called "World's Longest Bus Ride" or "Longest Bus Ride Ever" or something like that.) So we got some plane tickets.
Then we wandered into a pub for dinner and watched some futbol with a bunch of locals - a pretty friendly bunch. Finally, we returned to the hostel and impressed all our hostel mates with our superior billiards ability.
Coming up tomorrow: lots of street food, a visit to Chinatown, Anne becomes an Inquisitor, Trevor frolics in a fountain... and MORE!
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