We had a hotel booked in Denver for the weekend, and then it snowed. 24 hours later we were on a flight to Peru. No Machu Picchu. No Sacred Valley. No "see everything in Peru." Just a quick, long weekend in Lima.
The first thing I noticed was how clean everything was. People were washing the sidewalks every morning! I didn't even know that was a thing. There was no trash anywhere, but there was a lot of dog poop. I couldn't get over how many dogs there were in the oceanside concrete jungle. I also loved that you could walk for hours and never feel like you'd reached the end of the neighborhood. The people weren't overly warm, but they were incredibly hospitable.
Swim with Sea Lions: absolute highlight of the trip. Took a boat out to a remote island, passing lots of penguins along the way, and then you hop in the water with hundreds of playful sea lions. This really was so fun!
Zero Bambu + Pima: my favorite souvenir. All plain, natural bamboo and pima cotton clothing. Bought several pairs of pants and shirts here that have become favorites.
Parque Maria Reiche: we walked a TON. All day, everyday, and stumbled across this park near sunset. It's the perfect place to lay in the grass and take in the surroundings.
Walk: walk everywhere all the time anywhere you can. The restaurants, boutiques, and alley ways never end.
Mifarma: Obviously a pharmacy isn't an activity, and hopefully not needed, but they spoke english and were able to give me prescription medicines that made me feel much better.
Hilton Lima Miraflores: great location. Good hotel food, great pool. Would stay again.
Kjolle: lol. Number nine on the list of the world's best restaurants. When you book a spontaneous trip to a country with a top 10 restaurant in the world, you have to eat there, right? Wrong 😂 Unless you want to spend $900 on a meal that doesn't even crack your top five for the weekend, I'd skip it.
We knew how much this meal was going to be, so there wasn't any sticker shock. But it's just not my jam. I felt like I needed to use words like decadent and divine all night. Part of fine dining is the explanation behind each course, but this felt like someone was reading me the Declaration of Independence at all 9 courses. Including one course that was just foam (I did delight in the foam). By the fourth course, I was only focused on how many paragraphs they could come up with to describe a carrot.
We also did two wine pairings, which was about 1.5 pairings too many. Every course came with its own glass of wine. I'm a two-glass-max kind of girl, so this was an aggressively optimistic decision.
Was it memorable? Definitely. Would I eat there again? Absolutely not.
The best part of the night was walking home laughing about how we'd rather be eating the $20 ceviche we had for lunch.
Natural Chef Gluten Free: Best (and only) GF empanada I've had. We ate here several times.
Restaurant Huaca Pucllana: Situated at the base of the 1,500 year old Huaca ruins. Never seen a restaurant like that before. Ceviche was good.
Cevicheria Punto Azul: casual, laid back, great ceviche, large portions. Really good pisco sours. Very big pisco sours.
La Bodega Verde: breakfast in barranco. Light, salad, smoothies, etc. Walked here from Miraflores.
Barra Maretazo: I didn't eat here because I got kind of sick, but it looked good. I walked across the street and got strawberry sorbet from Natural Chef and brought it back to the table at Barra Maretazo. The waiter was very friendly and didn't mind at all, and still brought me lots of things to sample (that I didn't try).
Barra Botanica: this place was so cute, and really good (great GF reviews), but I think this is where I got sick. They served ice cream with a real cone on top after bragging about how good they were about gluten and cross contamination. Would not go back for that reason.