After breakfast (very early) this morning, someone from the hotel drove us to the train station in Ollantaytambo to catch our 7:45am train to Machu Picchu. We arrived at about 9:15am and someone from Condor Travel (Frida) was waiting for us to escort us up and be our tour guide for the day. Another Condor agent took our bags to our hotel and we immediately boarded the bus to Machu Picchu. It´s about 20 minutes to the top, and you can´t really see much until you are almost there. But when you get there... WOW! I don´t really even have the [View Full Entry]

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This morning after breakfast we set out with a bus group to the Sacred Valley. Because we´re heading to Machu Picchu tomorrow and you cannot take big luggage with you on the train, we left our suitcases in storage at our hotel in Cusco and headed out with 3 days worth of clothing stuffed into backpacks. Our first stop of the day was at a Peruvian arts center and private zoo where we were able to see native women and girls weaving blankets and other handicrafts. We also got to feed several alpaca and llamas. I became quite attached to a [View Full Entry]

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After breakfast this morning our guide took us to Piquillacta, located about 20 miles outside of Cusco (toward Puno). Piquillacta is the most important of the pre-Inca construction here in Cusco. Built by the Huari culture between A.D. 700 and 900, it is made up more than 700 adobe structures that may have housed as many as 10,000 people. After Piquillacta we headed to the small town of Andahuaylillas to visit the Peruvian Sixtine Chapel. The chapel was quite small but very beautiful inside. This was also my first ´scary restroom´ experience in Peru. The restroom had no toilet paper, no [View Full Entry]

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This morning after breakfast at our hotel we were picked up and taken to Lima Airport to catch a 12:10 flight to Cusco. (Short side note- Lima Airport has a Dunkin Donuts... we don´t even have a Dunkin Donuts in California!). The flight was a little more than an hour and after collecting our bags, we met with our driver from Condor Travel and headed to our hotel, the Casa Andina Private Collection. We had a city tour scheduled immediately upon our arrival so it was a good thing that the altitude did not seem to be affecting me at all. [View Full Entry]

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I am quickly learning to adjust to not ingesting the water here in Peru. I am so paranoid about getting sick that I hold my breath every time the water even gets near my face. Better safe than sorry though. We ate a buffet breakfast at the hotel this morning and then met with Viviana (our travel agent) to collect our final itinerary and all of our documentation. Our trip has only begun, but so far Peru Tourism has been a wonderful company. I was so wary because there are SO many Peru tour companies on the internet and it´s hard [View Full Entry]

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We left LAX at 9am this morning and spent the entire day flying, first to Houston and then onto Lima. We arrived in Lima at 10pm, a little earlier than scheduled. It´s hard to say what the airport itself is like as we hurried through to immigration and on to pick up our bags and it was really too late to see much of anything. Near the baggage claim area are people offering cell phones to rent for $10. I´m not sure exactly what they cost after that but it´s convenient that you can get one so easily. After gathering our [View Full Entry]

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Since today was our last day in New Orleans, we decided to set out on our already exhausted feet and do one last historical walk around the city. After a lot of miles and a few new blisters, this is a summary of what we saw today... St. Louis Cemetery #1- This is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans, built in 1789 to replace the St. Peter Cemetery. Many of the tombs from St. Peter's were moved to the St. Louis Cemetery and can easily be identified by their appearance (stacks of odd red bricks piled up haphazardly). St. Louis Cemetery [View Full Entry]

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I had a walking tour planned for today that was disrupted a bit due to our having to move our car out and back into the Harrah's parking structure (validation is only good for 24 hours at a time). It's a good thing we have one more full day here so we can catch all the sights we missed today! We started the day off at Cafe du Monde, a coffee shop on Decatur Street that was established in 1862 and has remained relatively unchanged over the years. I had some beignets (pronounced ben-yays, and yes, I looked that up before [View Full Entry]

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We had some time to kill today, in between checking out of our Motel 6 in East New Orleans and checking into our new hotel at the Best Western St. Christopher on Magazine Street (located right off Canal Street, in the heart of the French Quarter). We ate a late breakfast at IHOP and then went exploring around the city, driving past more than our fair share of FEMA trailers and then seeing a completely different side of life in the Garden District (huge homes, and gorgeous!). We parked near the corner of Washington and Prytania and walked aroud the Lafayette [View Full Entry]

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After another cheap (and not very good) breakfast at McDonald's this morning, we set out on the 1-10 W from Mobile toward our final destination, New Orleans. The weather has turned up about 10 degrees in the past few days, so the car air conditioning was going full blast as we made our way through Mississippi. I saw a sign for (President of the Confederacy) Jefferson Davis' home (Beauvoir), so we decided to make a stop to get a picture. The home, located in Biloxi, was built in 1853 and was Davis' last residence. Due to heavy structural damage from Hurricane [View Full Entry]

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