Better than we thought

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We only had one whole day in Lima. Lots of people on previous trips had complained that it was not nice, so our stay had been limited to one day. But we loved it. Staying near the Plaza de Armas, we found the area to very lively and colourful. The Plaza de Armas is beautiful with yellow buildings on 2 sides,the presidents residence on another and the cathedral of course. The yellow buildings would once have been government buildings but now they were full of restaurants and shops. There were tanks stationed around the presidents residence, cute little ones.

On the Saturday night when we arrived we found a lovely local fair going on to the north of the plaza. There were fridge magnets of corn and fruit and animals, lucky dips, and little stalls selling corn and egg and cheese. We had dinner that evening at the nunnery on Ucayali. You had to ring the bell to get in and were greeted by a smiling french nun. It was a beautiful building with wooden ceilings with beams and beautiful doors and stair cases. But the decor was unfortunate. It looked like they would be using the tables and chairs for bingo in the morning. Very cheap, green and pink. Being french, they served beautifully soft bread, which alone made the visit worth while. We had been eating so much stodgy bead in South America so far. The food was very good but it was an expensive night out. And it did feel a little awkward as we were the only ones there and after dessert the nuns sang Ave Maria for us. It was lovely.

We spent most of our day in Lima whizzing around museums. Lots of taxi rides but no trouble from the drivers.

We went to the Museo de la Nacion. Approaching the building you will be impressed by the massive ugly modern concrete structure. Set out in chronological order over a number of floors there are fantastic models as well as the usual ceramics, gold, and silver. There is one fabulous gold mask in a room on its own. Entrance 7 sols.

The Museo Larco had something different. Set in an 18th century mansion, there are some beautiful gardens and a restaurant. It is quite expensive at 25 sols, and at first you think it is not worth it. The main exhibit is of the usual pre-columbian stuff and there is a temporary exhibit with lots of gold. But what makes this museum worth the money is the storage rooms. There are a number of rooms connected together stuffed with shelves and shelves and shelves of pre-columbian ceramic pots. They are protected by glass and grouped by period and design. All the owls are together, some bats, lots of cats and people as well as plain pots. And, if you are interested, a room of erotic pots. There are some positions in there that we had not seem before on pots.

The Anthropological Museum is a pretty colonial building. You can walk to this museum from the Museo Larco via a blue line on the pavement. It would have taken perhaps 20 minutes but we opted for a 4 sols taxi ride. A fantastic big colonial complex with 3 courtyards, it has the same kind of stuff inside as in the Museo Nacion or Museo Larco but in additional it has a good colonial history section and a really big model on Macchu Picchu. Entrance was 11 sols.

We visited the Monastery of San Francisco. We were obliged to take a tour and our guide was sober and bored looking but he knew the banter and prattled on about the and construction of the building. The first highlight of the visit was the library. You were not allowed to wander around like the Recoleta in Arequipa but it was fantastic all the same. There were 2 spiral staircases in the middle leading up to the gallery. There were skylights used for light before the days of electricity that cast a mysterious glow on the room. And there were 2 illuminated books on display, very big. The second highlight was the catacombs. Bit damp and smelly but an adventure through the narrow passages and low doorways. Archaeologists had had a lot of fun there. In order to count the number of bodies found they had stacked bones into stalls along the wall. In one round area they had arranged skulls and bones into a circular pattern. Ghoulish really.

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