For most of my life I've always said that I wanted to live in a city. That I can't imagine living in a smaller town, and I'm pretty sure I would go crazy. But traveling I consistently find that I am unimpressed with big cities, and I find myself falling in love with smaller towns. It's a variety of reasons. Safety. Walking (I prefer this SO much more to buses or taxis). Charm. Warmth of people. It seems to be a unanimous trait that people in big cities are in more of a rush. Practicality. Cities are big dirty and busy. Apparently I like that more for living than for visiting. Anyways, it's been rare that I visit a capital city of any country and fall particularly in love with it. Still, I always feel like the capitol city deserves a day or two. And after a day or two, I am usually ready to go.
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| Heh. |
Lima was no exception. I had the option of transferring straight from a night bus from Cuzco to a day bus straight up into the Cordillera Blanca. Instead I decided to stretch my legs in Lima. This was not my first time in Lima so I didn't really feel pressure to try to squeeze all the touristy things into one day. I did remember from my first trip to Lima that there was a park full of cats. So of course I found that again. It's called Parque Kennedy. Wandered around with some cats. Read my Kindle with some cats.
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| Yoga in the park |
It was a Sunday, so they had a couple of the main streets closed to cars and open for bikes (this seems to be relatively common in big cities in SA. Woohoo!). I also watched a teacher instruct a massive Zumba class in the street.
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| I also got my hair cut. She never got my hair wet! Just straightened it and cut about two inches off. The humidity let my hair stay straight for all of five min after I walked out of the salon. |
Afterwards I meandered out and read my book on the beach. The beaches near Lima aren't particularly gorgeous, but people can take beginning surfing lessons from a number of shops along the stone beach. It's pretty cool to look back behind you and see the apartment and office buildings rising up off the cliffs above the ocean.
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| Beach + city #westcoastbestcoast |
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| The stupid waves kept getting close to where I was sitting and getting me wet. |
When you travel abroad, everyone (or maybe just a few people I talked to) picks up a sweet or treat or nostalgic food they know they can get that reminds them of home. You can't just order pizza in SE Asia. It's basically NEVER anything beyond a shadow of what pizza is in the US. But Oreos. You can always trust Oreos to be exactly what you expect. That's why Pringles and Oreos have a particular soft spot in my heart for bus snacks. Last year when Cheyenne and I were in the Bangkok airport we both got excited to eat McDonalds. Neither of us love McDonalds or eat it much. But it's just so reassuring to know exactly what you're going to get. And so I got a bit of that when my dinner in Lima was a personal pizza from Pizza Hut and a chai from Starbucks. Granted, the Starbucks purchase was more for the wifi than anything, It'd been way too long since my phone had been able to back itself up. The wifi at the Buck was zooming! Thank you American companies for being entirely predictable.
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| The Buccccck |
I walked back through the cat park on the way home and saw all these people gathered at the corner of the park. And there was music. I can't noooot check it out. Turns out it was a bunch of older folks that all get together every Sunday night in the park to dance. After a couple of invitations to dance, I politely declined and headed back to my hostel. I had a bus bright and early up to the mountains for some more exploring and my last big stop in Peru.
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| The dancing was quite popular. |
