Farewell Lima Peru! You’ve Been Good to Us.
As many of you know, we’re country bumpkins at heart. We’ve always gravitated toward the countryside, even though we fully appreciate the cities we visit during our travels. The cultural activities, museums, and restaurants you find in cities are always fun to experience! That said, we’ve never “lived” in a proper city before. So when we arrived in Lima Peru we expected to feel increasingly out of our element the longer we stayed.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The more we stayed, the more we appreciated everything Lima Peru had to offer. The views, the culture, the people, the history, the food, the safety, the walkability, the relative affordability, and the never-ending list of ways to occupy your time all captured our hearts. We will miss this place!
We’ve done so much in Lima! And since so many of our explorations weren’t big enough to be blog post-worthy, we figured we’d make a goodbye scrapbook of sorts to commemorate some of our smaller experiences.
So we’d like to give a proper farewell to Lima Peru before we fly out to Cusco, our next stop.
Be sure to click the header links provided if you would like more details about any of these locations!
Huaca Pucllana Ruins
This was the first archaeological site we visited in Lima, and it was 10 blocks from our Airbnb! This massive complex was built by the Lima culture (200 – 700 BC) as a sacred site of worship which was used by priests to astronomically predict the change of seasons.
The entrance fee is 15 Soles/$3.90 USD per person, and includes a guided tour!
Parque Chino de Miraflores
Free to the public, this park was recently built to commemorate the arrival of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century, as well as 50 years of diplomatic relations between Peru and the People’s Republic of China.
It is a beautiful place!
Parque del Amor
Another free park (of many) in Miraflores, it was built in honor of Valentine’s Day…and the fact that lovers often visited to enjoy the Pacific sunsets.
The giant sculpture, “El Beso“, supposedly celebrates the contest for the “longest kiss” that was held here.
Parque Kennedy
The “central park” of the Miraflores district, it was renamed when a bust of John F. Kennedy was installed in 2003 to commemorate the twin-city designation of Miraflores with that of Pensacola, Florida.
The landscaping is lovely with flowers…
And statues aplenty.
It is even a dedicated cat park, with cats living here full time to keep down the rat population. They are fed and cared for by volunteers!
It is a great place to hang out and eat takeout shwarmas for lunch.
And on Saturday nights, the public comes out to dance!
Plaza Mayor de Lima (Lima Main Square)
Established by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1535, the Plaza Mayor de Lima is the center of government in Lima’s historic district. Bordering the plaza are a number of sites of governmental or religious significance, including the Government Palace, Lima Metropolitan Cathedral, Archbishop’s Palace of Lima, the Municipal Palace, and the Palacio de la Unión.
It is gorgeous!
But we focused on the locations of greatest interest to us in the plaza and nearby:
- Museo Convento San Francisco y Catacumbas
- Palacio Arzobispal de Lima (Archbishop’s Palace of Lima)
- Catedral de Lima (Cathedral of Lima)
Museo Convento San Francisco y Catacumbas
Founded by Fray Francisco de la Cruz in 1546, this functioning Franciscan convent (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) is a repository of religious art and historical artifacts that is impressive to behold. But sadly they didn’t allow photography inside!
There is also a series of subterranean catacombs beneath the facility that you can explore, with bones of those interred on display. Very cool if you are interested in such things. But some of the people in our tour group were a little freaked out!
We strongly recommend that people make time to visit if they can, even if we don’t have the photographic evidence to warrant such a visit. But here are some pictures from outside the museum to help you find the place!
The entrance fee is 15 Soles/$3.90 USD per person, and includes a guided tour!
Palacio Arzobispal de Lima (Archbishop’s Palace of Lima)
This place is a big deal in Peru, as it is the residence of the Archbishop of Lima, as well the administrative headquarters of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lima.
We purchased combination entrance tickets that allowed us entrance here, as well as the Catedral de Lima (see below), for 20 Soles/$5.20 USD per person. Non-combination tickets were 15 Soles/$3.90 per person per location.
Of the areas we were allowed access to, the art and artifacts on display were top quality, as you can imagine. And the administrative areas were plush!
Catedral de Lima (Cathedral of Lima)
Directly next to the Palacio Arzobispal de Lima, the Catedral de Lima is even more impressive.
It is the third and current Cathedral of Lima (the previous ones were apparently destroyed in earthquakes) and was built between 1602 and 1797. It is dedicated to St. John the Apostle.
This cathedral was amazing! So much iconography of religious significance here.
They even had their own catacomb system for extremely important religious figures. It appears that many cardinals are interred here.
And it even houses the remains of conquistador Francisco Pizarro!
There is so much more to see! The pictures really don’t do this place justice.
Museo de Minerales Andrés Del Castillo
We love geology as much as we do biology and archaeology, so we had to check this place out!
Established in 2019 and maintained by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM), the museum is responsible for preserving and exhibiting minerals, as well as ancient Chancay ceramics and textiles. The items on display are from the UNMSM, as well as the private collection of Guido del Castillo, a Peruvian mining engineer.
The quality and diversity of displays were impressive!
And it was inexpensive to visit. The entrance fee was 10 Soles/$2.60 USD per person.
Museo de Historia Natural
Considering our backgrounds, it should be no surprise to anyone that we came here. It was an old-school, mid-20th-century style museum for sure.
The entrance fee was 10 Soles/$2.60 USD per person.
But we enjoyed the Peru-specific exhibits of modern and ancient vertebrates that lived in South America at different points in time.
Circuito Mágico del Agua
Established in 2007, the Circuito Magico del Agua is part of a larger public space reclamation initiative in Lima. The park is beautiful and features 13 fountains that are synchronized to music and light in different ways. So needless to say, this park is best viewed during the evening.
The entrance fee was only 4 Soles/$1.04 USD per person!
We visited this park last night and really had a wonderful time! Check out our photos of the fountains during the day and evening hours.
And three times per evening there is a 15-minute multimedia extravaganza, with light and sound, about the history of modern Peru! It happens at fountain 2, the largest in the park, and was really impressive!
Check out our 2-minute video clip of the show…it was very, very cool.
Farewell Lima…Don’t be Surprised If We Return!
So as we have repeatedly said, we really loved our stay in Lima Peru. We couldn’t believe how quickly our 28 nights passed here. Don’t be surprised if we come back someday!
When this post is published we should be in the Jorge Chavez International Airport waiting for our flight to Cusco, Peru. It is our first experience with a discount airline (JetSMART), but the flight is short (90 minutes) and direct, so we should be able to endure any unpleasantness during the flight. And the price is very reasonable, at $67.96 USD per ticket!
Farewell Lima. But Cusco and Machu Picchu await!
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