Our hotel here is great except for the fact that the sun shines directly into our window in the morning. The city is beautiful - most buildings where we are were constructed using white stone and it´s just gorgeous. Everything is one- or two-stories, lots of grand wooden doors that open onto courtyards. We love it here.
Yesterday we were off to a bit of a late start, but went to lunch at a middle eastern restaurant on the main drag of the downtown area. There are tons of shops and restaurants and bars around us, so we´ve just been walking everywhere, it´s great. The food here is really interesting - Peruvian food is influenced by lots of different cultures, so there are Asian-inspired dishes, lots of middle eastern spices, and of course the South American flavors as well. Interesting meats as well - I´ve seen ostrich, alpaca, and even guinea pig on the menus, although none of us has been brave enough to order anything like that yet. I will eat guinea pig before I leave Peru, I promise. And I´ll take pictures, don´t worry.
After lunch we toured the Santa Catalina convent that´s just one block from our hotel. It´s essentially a city within the city - walled off and with its own series of rooms, streets, shops, and kitchens. It still functions as a convent but has only been open to the public for the last 30 or so years, and it´s been in existence for over 400 years. The nuns are completely cloistered, and inside the walls it was surprisingly quiet. There were a number of courtyards and the architecture was quite nice - fun bright colors and lots of trees and flowers. Series of photos from inside the monastery:
We followed that with a siesta, until I got a little cabin fever and started making noise to wake people up. Our dinner plans were to eat at our French friend Lorenzo´s restaurant, where he promised to cook for us. We had a pre-dinner cocktail at our other French friend Javier´s bar, where we ran into Lorenzo, who sent us to the restaurant.
I will spare you the details of the dinner, because it sucked. Seriously, we were having a hard time pretending to be impressed when he came to our table, and Beth had to eat almost all the "scallop" appetizer (they were not scallops but we couldn´t figure out what, exactly, they really were) because it made me gag. The only redeeming thing was the bottle of wine he recommended and the free flavored Pisco afterwards. He then presented us with a little gift - a ceramic bottle with a cork full of more flavored pisco. The cask itself is mildly inappropriate, but we´re going to pass it around as a gag gift for the rest of our lives. Beware.
Dinner photos:
Of course after dinner we went back to Javier´s bar, where by the end of the evening we´d cleared the tables and chairs and were salsa dancing. Well, Javier was teaching those of us (me) who don´t know how to salsa dance. I hope his toes are okay. "Javie" ended up closing the bar but let us stay, so we danced the night away. It was great fun, and we met a guy named Gregory who lives in Puno and offered to show us around or at least tip us off to the good local places to go when we get to town.
Today, again - late start. We all just wanted to eat and immediately, and walked to the Plaza de Armas to lunch at an outdoor cafe on the roof of the third floor, overlooking the Plaza. Great views, lots of pictures, we were starving. The menu was hysterical - I think they had some translation issues because there were dishes like "Special Nibbles" and "Pizza to the Bacon" (which is what I ordered - again, LOTS of Italian places here). We order, and wait. And wait. And wait. We were at the restaurant for over two hours, and it got so cold that the waiter came around with wool ponchos for all the patrons. So we ate lunch on a balcony in the wind wearing ponchos. Yes, there are photos, and here they are:
Special Nibbles:
Pizza to the Bacon!
The Plaza de Armas from the terrace cafe:
We were cold, here are our ponchos that were put on us by our waiter:
It´s too bad it´s been so cloudy because we´ve caught glimpses of the three volcanoes that surround Arequipa and they are stunning. We´re at about 6500 feet right now and those things still look humongously tall. Tomorrow it´s off to Juliaca and Puno, which is right next to Lake Titicaca. We´ll be at almost 11000 feet tomorrow, so hopefully we won´t have too much altitude issues. We´re trying to stay hydrated (beer counts, right?), but at this point we´re blaming every ailment on the altitude.
Bethie is a little under the weather so we´re not allowing her to drink from the communal bottle of agua sin gas (flat water), and we´re hoping she gets better soon. She´s not letting it slow her down though.
Interesting note about the bathrooms in Peru - the public ones, even in restaurants, do not always have toilet paper, and I have yet to see a bathroom with a fan or a window that opens. No "tourista" yet, but I have my concerns...
That´s all for now - it might be harder to blog from Puno as our hotel doesn´t have internet (I think) - oh, and we´re staying at the Hotel Italia in Puno, I can´t remember if that made it into the itinerary as it was a last-minute reservation.
More later!
P.S. Here is some interesting stonework that was all over Arequipa:
And the view of one of the three volcanoes surrounding Arequipa from the tarmac as we were getting on our surprise 6:15ish AM flight:
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