Thursday, 18 April 2013
Lima, Peru Day 2
Port of Callao

Today a very different and even more fascinating shore excursion:  a small group (11 passengers) 4 ½-hour walking tour through the heart of old Colonial Lima.  There are many stops along the way, including a restaurant that serves delightful frozen fruit drinks.  The group was herded by two young guides, both very knowledgeable (and good-looking, too).  One of the guides, Eduardo, although clearly quite young, had already lived in Lima, Rome, Miami, and Lima again.  In addition to fluency in three other languages, his English was flawless American.  The other guide, Percy, was the leader because he has a university degree in tourism, a requirement for licensing in Peru (and many other countries of the world).

 

 

 

 

 

 

We begin the walk in Plaza Mayor, site of many monumental buildings, including the Cathedral of Lima, a finely restored hotel, and a lovely theatre building, whose inside was unfortunately destroyed by fire several years ago and has not yet been restored.  The Archbishop’s Palace and the Palace of the Colonial Governor line the other sides of the square.  You can read the fates of war heroes from the statues here:  the number of horses’ feet touching the ground indicate if the gentleman won or lost the battle or lived or died at the battle (a more complex system than the one in Richmond, VA, where the direction the statue faces give us that information).  From here we walk through a number of left-turn, right-turn streets lined with wooden balconies that are the typical architectural feature of Peruvian domestic and business architecture.  We pass a large number (not quite all 44) of the brightly colored Roman Catholic churches in this part of the city, each one representing a different faction of Catholicism, such as the Benedictines and the   monuments that line the chapels in each of the churches—mostly constructed of beautiful dark woods and gilded with gold leaf.

The second of the major squares is Plaza San Martin, from where we head to the restaurant Tante for liquid refreshment.  We arrive back at the ship in the early afternoon, where I rest up in anticipation of my Le Cirque Dinner at the Pinnacle Grill tonight.