Yay! Nowhere to be today! We got up at a reasonable hour and had breakfast. Not a bad spread. Hotel breakfasts are better here than in the states. 

We went back to the room, chilled a bit, and headed out for a walk. We started off at Kennedy Park, where I got to pet some cats. It’s cool, they actually have little houses for them, and feed and water them regularly. Then, we went to the malecon, the sidewalk next to the ocean, but here it’s way up high – Lima is on top of the cliffs next to the ocean. We hung out a while watching some paragliders try to take off, but they never made it. 

We continued our walk down the boardwalk and finally decided it was lunch time. We saw a cool looking restaurant hanging on the side of the cliff and decided that would be a cool place to go… And promptly realized it was in a mall. That being said, it was the COOLEST mall I’ve ever seen. The whole thing was built into the side of a cliff, hanging out over the Pacific Ocean. SO cool. Lunch wasn’t bad, either. I had a chicken sandwich with chunks of avocado and chicken and mayo… Yum. 

After lunch, we started working our way back to the hotel. We showered, chilled for a while, then went to dinner at Barbarian, a local brewery. The IPA was decent, my quesadilla wasn’t bad, and we had an okay time. Then back and to bed. 

We got up at a reasonable hour for once, had breakfast, and chilled out in our room for a while. 

Eventually, we grabbed an Uber and went to the old part of the city. We started at the park where there were still some parts of the old city wall, preserved for people to see. That was kinda cool. 

We turned towards the Plaza de Armas, and as we were getting closer, a bunch of cops materialized on the street…  What looked like dignitaries or something were crossing the street in front of us, and the entire plaza was closed to pedestrians for some reason. The police presence (in riot gear, no less) was slightly disconcerting. Luckily, nothing happened and we turned down towards the place I’d found for lunch…

…which was closed. Dammit, TripAdvisor! They said the place was open. Oh well. We walked down the street further to a park that we’d seen on the drive in. Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out how to cross the (ridiculously busy) street to get to it, and we gave up and went to find lunch. 

We ended up at the place next to the place I’d found.  It was super cool – a soccer themed bar that had all kinds of artifacts from around the world. The food and beer were good, too. We had a great lunch!

Afterwards, we grabbed another Uber back to our hotel, showered, and chilled til dinner time. 

We went to dinner literally around the corner from our hotel, next door to the ice cream shop we went to yesterday. Republica del Pisco had really good pisco sours and ceviche. SO much yum!  Afterwards, we wandered around for a little bit and then went back for more ice cream. 

Then, back to the hotel for bed. 

Time to go home today. Well, tonight. Our flight leaves at 11:54 pm or something ridiculous like that. And unfortunately, we have to check out of our hotel at 10:00 am. And we can’t get into the Premier Pass lounge til three hours before our flight…

Thankfully , the hotels down here are really good about letting you leave your bags checked with them. After breakfast, we checked out,  dropped off our bags, and headed out for (yet another) walk about town. 

We’d decided to walk down to Barranco, the “going out” district on the south side of town. It wasn’t super close, but we had the day to kill, so what the hell. 

It took a while to get down there, and when we did, everything appeared to be closed. We found a cute(ish) plaza with its obligatory church, and a river to cross… We managed to find a place open for lunch and had the pizza and wine special. 

After lunch, we headed back towards our hotel via the oceanside route, which was actually way prettier than the middle of the city one we’d taken there. At least the views of the ocean and the city perched on the cliff above were pretty. 

Eventually we got back and still had a while to kill. We found the Craftman Brewery and had a beer or two. While we were there we got a notification that our flight qualified for a change because of impending weather… We looked and found a flight that left two hours later (2:00 AM!), but arrived in Denver three hours earlier due to shorter flight times and shorter layovers. We jumped on it and resigned ourselves to hanging out at the airport for hours. 

We went back to the hotel, gathered our bags, and waited for the RedBus to the airport. We were getting on the stupid early bus, but whatever. 

Oh boy. The traffic was atrocious.  What was supposed to be a 45ish minute drive ( it was only 22K) turned into over two hours. I can RUN faster than that, for fuck’s sake! 

We FINALLY made it, and weirdly had to show our passports to be let into the airport. We walked in, went through security, and found our lounge. When we got there, it was more than three hours before our flight, and they asked us to wait 15 minutes… Which was no problem. 

We went in, sat down, and ate and chilled out for hours. I even managed to take a nap for a bit! 

We left the lounge at 1:45 in the morning, expecting the airport to be dead – and EVERYTHING was still open – the shit shacks, the food kiosks, even the jewelry store were still open. Weird. 

Our flights were nice and uneventful, complete with dinner served at 3:30 am…

And we’re home.