Lima is Peru's capital located in a desert right on the Pacific coast, the ocean currents keep it from getting super hot and humid like Guayaquil during the warm summer months, which is November through April. Despite being located on the ocean. Lima does not get rain. I visited Lima in July of 2015 with friends, which during those months, the temperatures are mild during the day in the 60's and 70's; but there is generally much less sunshine, with ominous, dark, overhanging cloud-cover.
Leo and I arrived a day after our travel companions from Cuenca, Juana Carchi and her son Paul Tacuri had arrived. All of us were residing in two Airbnbs in the Miraflores area of Lima. Not only is Miraflores one of the best areas in Lima; but also the convenience of everything within short walking distances to the ocean, beaches, Wong Supermarket, shopping, and endless numbers of bars and restaurants makes it a big tourist draw in Lima.
Juana and Paul
Our first evening together in the Miraflores area of Lima, we walked passed a park in the opposite direction of the ocean and found a corner restaurant called La Tiendecita Blanca. The restaurant had nice ambiance, good service, reasonable prices, and good food. It advertised as a Swiss restaurant, but the menu included many Peruvian dishes as well. Since the area is heavy with tourists, and an endless multiplicity of restaurants and bars to serve them; we considered ourselves very lucky not to begin our week of haute-cuisine, with mediocre food and high prices as can often be the case in tourist traps, or by just simply choosing a restaurant off the street as in this case.
My brother Leo and me
The restaurant also has a sidewalk patio service, but we chose
to eat inside, even in the evening to avoid the humidity.
We enjoyed are meals whether of pork, seafood, chicken, or steak,
as we returned to the restaurant twice. The dinner was a good beginning to our time in Lima.
The church below was near the La Tiendecita Blanca Restaurant. It was at the end of a large urban park in the heart of commercial Miraflores. There was a big playground in the park where large numbers of young kids and their parents were playing and relaxing as late as 11:00 in the evening, or whenever we walked passed or through the park.
LIMA CITY TOUR
The four of us went on a private city tour by van. After picking us up at our Airbnbs, the tour guide first took us to the well known sculpture, The Kiss, which was just blocks from our Airbnb, in the park on the coast and beaches.
The sculpture is quite sensual, and needs to be appreciated from different perspectives by walking around it. I first saw the sculpture five years ago; and I must say, after five years of these two going at it, they sure do have stamina.
The sculpture is surrounded by a plaza/garden, which includes mosaics reminiscent of the works of Gaudi.
Our next stop was at the Inca pyramid. The pyramid is more of a mound than what we usually think of as a pyramid. For example, unlike a number of pyramids in Egypt, there are no chambers inside the Peruvian pyramid. Daytime tours take groups to the top of the pyramid. At night, although the pyramid is bathed in lights, tours are not permitted to the top of the pyramid. On a future evening after our city tour, the four of us would eat at Carnal Steakhouse, which is located directly across from the pyramid.
If visitors to Lima have a keen interest in archeology, there are day trips out of Lima to various archeological sites of pre-Columbian cultures.
We next rode through an older, upper scale neighborhood; which had been built by the Germans after World War II, in typical European two story home styles from that period. Many Germans settled in both Lima and Buenos Aires in the immediate post war era.
Our final destination was the historical centro part of the city, located at Plaza de Armas; the location of the basilica, the catacombs, the Convent de San Francisco, government buildings, and plazas and gardens.
The above is the Bar-Restaurant Cordano, the oldest tavern in Lima, but I don't recall how old. It's been around at least for a century. One of the employees has been working there for forty-six years now. It has attracted many politicians, writers, and artists over the years. It is located near the Basilica and the Convent of San Francisco, two of the tourist sites visited on our tour.
POSTRE AND ICE CREAM SHOPPE ON THE SQUARE
CITY VIEWS FROM OUR VAN
SCULPTURE OF LLAMAS
Carnal PRIME STEAKHOUSE
One evening we ate at Carnal's Steakhouse, as I mentioned, it is directly across from the pyramid. The restaurant is bathed in ambiance. I had dined there five years earlier during the afternoon. I had a perfect meal, with perfect steak, and perfect service. Yet, how much nicer is the atmosphere in the evening. The steaks were very good, and one can order a choice of cuts of either Angus or Wagyu.
Leo, in a mystical moment of steak paradise.
MUSEO LARCO
Museo Larco has an excellent collection of pre-Colombian art and artifacts, with some fabulous exhibits of gold figurines set-off in black settings to accentuate the gold. I marveled at the collection five years ago upon my last visit. Unfortunately, I lost my camera, and lost my photos from the collection. Now I had a chance to retrieve my lost photos by taking new ones.
There is some Spanish influence in the museum as well.
I found this quite interesting. The Spanish monarch is in the above photo. While below, is a genealogy created by the Spaniards to justify their conquest of the Inca Empire whose capital was located in modern day Lima. The genealogy traces the Spanish monarch as a direct continuation of the monarchs of the Inca dynasty.
Below are some of the pre-Colombian fabrics exhibited in the Museo Larco.
There is a beautiful garden and park-setting in the courtyard of the Museo Larco.
Five years ago I had a good seafood dinner in the evening in the courtyard, which also has an indoor restaurant. This time the four of us, relaxed and had some postres and coffees.
ASTRID & GASTON RESTAURANT
Lima is an international hot-spot for top gourmet restaurants in the world. Two of the most highly rated are Central and Maido ranked number 5 and number 6 world wide for 2020. Reservations are needed at least a month in advance. Both offer tasting menus, as does Astrid & Gaston, another highly rated restaurant in Lima.
These tasting menus can vary from thirteen to seventeen courses. The tasting menus are not so much a dinner as a presentation. Each dish is brought out individually; an explanation of the ingredients, history, and preparation is provided before the next dish is presented. The dinner can take up to three and a half hours to complete. A menu souvenir is provided, so that the diners can remember what they partook earlier in the dinner and after they depart. The cost per guest will vary from $140 to $400 a meal, dependent upon the number of courses and whether or not one wishes to have wine with the meal.
If you are interested in how Lima became a signature site for world top quality restaurants, you may check out my post I did five years ago. If I say so myself, I did an excellent job with the explanation.
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So the four of us dined at Astrid & Gaston, where I had dined also five years ago; but in a more informal contemporary dining room, when it had become popular to watch the cooks in the kitchen prepare the meals. We preferred to order from the menu, rather than do a tasting menu. That way we could socialize with one another and eat at our pace.
Below, Juana, Paul, Leo, and Jim
One may think from the photos below that we are outside, but we are not. Overlooking from the balconies, below is the bar and lounge area.
The ocean scallops were plump, and the sauce was absolutely to die for. We shared about three different appetizers, and the main dishes for each of us varied. At least twice in Lima I dined on chiva or goat, which was the best I've had compared to restaurants in Cuenca. The meals were very good. Some of the sauces were on the rich side, but fabulous.
MIRAFLORES WATERFRONT
After dinner at Astrid and Gaston, we dropped Juana off at her and Paul's Airbnb, and then we three guys walked around and found an Italian restaurant/bar, which wasn't packed and ear-splitting noisy like most of these establishments in the area. The time may have been about ten to eleven. Leo had a dessert. Paul and I split an antipasto plate, which was totally memorable only for its mediocrity. It wasn't long before Leo just simply fell asleep at the table. Paul and I walked him to our Airbnb. Leo retired for the night.
Paul and I walked down to the beach, and then walked for the next four hours along the coast. It was my best night of the two weeks I spent in Lima and Buenos Aires. I loved being on the beach, hearing the sound of the ebb and flow of the waves, and seeing young people out in small groups enjoying one another without being rowdy. With the beach practically empty of people, I always feel like a free spirit when I am on a beach and near a large body of water like the Pacific. Walking along the coast, reminded me of evenings I enjoyed in years past of walking along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago; or the similar experience of walking along the Arabian Sea in Mumbai. The Drive under the lights at night is referred to as the Queen's necklace, as a reminder that India was once under the British crown.
Lima, with approximately ten million people, is crowded and noisy, but along the ocean late at night it was awesome and tranquil, and we could look back and up from the beach at the high rises and wonder how ten million people were just beyond the highway on the other side. Little did I know that a month later, I would have the same experience of tranquility and almost total silence in Cuenca under a different set of circumstances, and not just for one night. Ah, the Sound of Silence.
Some of the photos in this post are actually Paul's. He has a real eye in the use of the camera, is very observant to detail, and has the patience of a saint until he can take just the photo he wants.
I am a walker and a late-nighter, and lucky for me Paul is generally willing to walk miles as well. Coming from a different direction the night before, we discovered a shopping mall on the beach. The interior was closed, but the expansive patio of restaurants and bars was just closing down. It was 1:00 a.m., and we were fortunate to find a bar still serving drinks, and we sat overlooking the ocean until they finally closed us down for the evening. We returned to the same site again the next night, but arrived much later in the night in any hope of finding any of the patio watering holes open. Still, it was nice to be in this space, free of almost everybody.
Eventually, we had to leave the beach area, if we were ever going to return to our airbnb before sunrise. Paul and I took a bridge over the highway, and then climbed upward toward the high rises (in the photo below), walked about our last mile for the night, and finally turned-in. For me, it was a great night. I loved it, and will long remember that late night in Lima that few people get to experience.
On one day Paul and Juana ventured off on their own to go down to the beach along the coast in Lima to swim with the sea lions. They very much enjoyed it.
MUSEO DE MATE
Mario Testino Museum is a non-profit organization founded by Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino, in 2012. It's a platform for the development of creative industries, a window for the international contemporary art in Lima and for peruvian talent to the world. Wikipedia
Testino is one of, if not, the foremost fashion photographer in the world. His focus has been on international celebrities. His home is in Lima, and he is a native of Peru. While there are a few select things well-worth seeing in the museum. The museum is called MATE. It unfortunately, is a museum of low lying ceilings in the galleries.
In 2014, I visited Sao Paulo, Brazil. Testino had a fantastic exhibit of gallery after gallery of dozens of celebrities he had photographed. The ceilings in the galleries were high, so seeing larger than life photos of Barbara Streisland, Madonna, Princess Diana, etc in bigger than life photos that were twenty to thirty feet in height was a dazzling display of his photographic talent. I shot many photos from that exhibit, but never posted them. Maybe someday, I'll get around to it. Also, in my link at the bottom, you can see some of the photos in his MATE museum collection, as well as some other museums not covered in this post.
An exhibit in Mario Tacino's Museo de Mate.
As was the case five years ago in my visit to Peru, we completed our culinary experiences of Lima restaurants at Fiesta Restaurant. I was not to be disappointed. A mixture of mash potatoes, rice, and spices is a Peruvian favorite.
Fiesta was a perfect closure to our week of experiencing so many different flavors of dishes centered around goat, pork, chicken, and beef. Fiesta also has a reputation for offering dishes from pre-Colombian recipes. I ate much less seafood in the restaurants this time, for which Lima is famous, than on my previous visit. It just worked out that way. Although we also had lunch at La Mar, known for its ceviche. I was under the weather one day, while my three companions returned to La Mar again for lunch. Paul, really enjoyed the ceviche at La Mar.
Unfortunately, I have yet to travel on a long trip that Google Photos doesn't manage to lose some of my photos. I have no photos of La Mar. I
took my fair share of photos of the plates of ceviches; as well as the touristy, Caribbean
decor of the restaurant, and its lively music--a complete redo from its white table cloth
formal subdue feeling from my visit five years ago. But alas, those photos are floating somewhere in Google Photo heaven; somewhere in the Google cloud beyond the rainbow.
Ironically, we could have spent another week in Lima eating at high-end restaurants with great reputations for their cuisine, and we still would have not exhausted the list of restaurants with very good reputations in Lima. If one enjoys excellent cuisine, generally at a fraction of the cost for such meals in cities like Chicago, New York, or Washington, D.C.; Lima is the place to go.
If you wish to view more photos of Miraflores, the MATE Museum photos, other museums, and other sites in Lima not covered in this post from my visit from five years ago; just click-on, or copy and paste the link below into your URL:
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