DAY 194
It was a long afternoon yesterday to go back to Barranco and today is the final leg back to Lima, ending our 1400km road trip. After having had a car, we now have a home in Lima!! When there is home, there is grocery shopping and no need to eat out every single day, yeah! :D
DAY 196
We may wonder where day 195 went. Well, it went well ;) The plan is to go see the last Star Wars movie tonight so we did a Star Wars marathon yesterday. The whole day without going out... Revolutionary for us! Time to go out a bit today though. We continue our gastronomy tour of Peru with a stop at "La 73" (duck risotto!!!) in Barranco. It's the very touristy part of the city and we're being hailed all the time. We check out the cliff to see that Lima is another city (like NYC) that turns its back to the sea. It has some mural but we're snobs now and the ones we saw in Valpo were so much better ;) Walking about is a nice way to enjoy the afternoon though. The mix of restored and decrepit makes for interesting pictures.
Star Wars VII was... worse than expected and expectations were low. Enough said :/
DAY 197
Last day in Lima! We got check out the city center but our mind is already in Brazil. We find one good last mandatory ceviche (we'll miss that a lot) and visit a few things. The traffic downtown is the craziest and most dangerous we've seen so far in the country; it's the capital after all. The Iglesia de la Merced is really ugly outside, and inside too ;) Pink and yellow with a golden altar... disturbing. It has a monstrous Christmas crib with waterfalls, lakes, a rainbow, a huge sheep infestation and even real plants!!!
There is not much to be thrilled about the Plaza de armas and the cathedral is weird. It looks like the fusion of 3 things, the towers, the doors and the main facade... 3 styles. Next up is San Francisco. It's the theme here it seems, the outside is quite ugly but this time the interior is very nice. The white and red bas-reliefs give it a very unusual look. The close by catacombs are already closed as is the nearby parco de la muralla. We started too late clearly today but we don't care much to be honest. Our last hope is "El circuito del agua", a nice park with lots of fountains. Some of them are purely decorative, some of them interactive. Kids are having a lot of fun getting soaked. We have fun too but we try to guess the pattern of the fountain to avoid getting too wet ;)
DAY 198
Early morning the traffic is pleasant in Lima. However the weather is the same, grayish and our flight is late but we have nothing else to do today. Still as a Frenchman I have a right to complain about late flights, the weather,... anything really ;)
San Paulo has a bus to the city center! It's a bit more expensive than in Santiago but we love to have public transportation! Our first impression from the bus is a city with a lot of green spaces, very modern but with lots of people living in the street, especially in the center.