|
Lima2 Apr 2008
|
|
The President's Palace, & changing of the guard (Francisco Pizarro´s old house...
The beautiful Cathedral where Francisco Pizarro was buried (and Plaza de Armas...
In there is Francisco Pizarro's tomb
| We decided to come to Lima before visiting the Cordillera Blanca because we wanted to get the x-rays we need for our NZ visas sorted so we don't have to worry about them. We tried couchsurfing for the first time here, and were really lucky cos it meant that we got to meet Mayte, who made us feel really welcome in her home, took us out, made Lima generally less daunting - and became a friend (thanks Mayte!). Lima's roads are permanently car-park like, which makes it tricky to get around (no underground yet - it's been being built since the 80's), and since we had to keep getting to places that were far away from each other in our x-ray quest (which was successful - eventually!), our sight-seeing time was a bit limited! We did manage to see the changing of the guards (much high stepping!), the beautiful cathedral, and the amazing Larco museum, with its erotic pottery exhibition, and its open store rooms full (literally - packed shelves from ceiling to floor) of pottery, mostly from the Moche culture, depicting every kind of animal, type of person, and daily activity imaginable - Tara could have spent days in there! Before we left, we took ourselves on an extremely fast walking tour of the old city to see (at speed!) some of its many churches, including the oldest, and the Church and Convent of San Fransisco, with it's macarbre (and slightly smelly!) catacombs; the place which housed the inquisition in Peru - and congress(!), now a museum; and a statue with a llama on her head in the Plaza San Martin (no-one explained the slightly confusing llama-flame translation to the statue makers so they went with a llama!). |
Advertisement 
|
