Central Lima’s Plaza de San Martin and Plaza Mayor

With only one full day to explore central Lima, we had to make some hard choices.  Too many worthy places to visit without enough time to see them all.  Good thing that the place where we stayed for our last two nights in Lima, the Gran Hotel Bolivar, was a kind of charming destination in itself—and right next to one of the major squares of the city, the Plaza de San Martin.

Our Gran Hotel Bolivar on the Plaza de San Martin

Impressive glass domed lobby area of the Gran Hotel Bolivar

Our high ceilinged room with balcony

After walking around the nearby plaza and appreciating the grandeur of the buildings and doing a bit of people-watching, we walked up the very crowded Jiron de Union towards the Plaza Major.  The street is lined with different clothing, shoe and electronic shops on both sides, along with many, many fast-food types of places.  Busy during the door and positively buzzing in the evenings with young Limenos enjoying themselves.

The Plaza de San Martin

Walking the busy Jiron de Union towards the Plaza Mayor

For the rest of the morning, we stopped at La Iglesia de la Merced (the church site where the first Latin Mass in Lima was celebrated in the 16^th century), and the exterior of the Torre Tagle Palace, a colonial mansion built in the 1730s and now the country’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Igelesia of the Merced with its famed silver cross

Government buildings with original wooden balconies

Perhaps most impressive that morning was our visit to the Catedral right next to the Plaza Mayor.  Within this church is housed the Museum of Religious Art and Treasures, which among other objects and paintings, hold what are believed to be the human remains of Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who defeated the Incan empire and founded the city of Lima.  The guy from Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel in the Collision at Cajamarca.  Really ‘impresionante’ to stand under the murals depicting his life and to see the tomb holding his remains.

Inside the Catedral on Plaza Mayor

The tomb of Francisco Pizarro inside the Catedral

Murals and other displays related to Pizarro

Being our final full day in Lima, I also had to try ceviche (raw fish and other seafoods marinated in limes and other juices), in many ways the national dish of Peru.  We took a taxi to the Chorillos beach area where we somewhat inadvertently ended up eating at the Costa Verde, a really fancy restaurant overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  With its huge and varied buffet spread of dishes from all over the country and other fresh pastas and desserts, we more than had our fill.

Water and ocean moss

Exploring oceanside at Costa Verde near Barranco

We luckily also were able to make it back to central Lima (in an ancient taxi that barely made it up the hill from the coastline) to see one of the most attractive churches of the area, the San Francisco.  As an Franciscan monastery, for the most part, we were not allowed to take pictures during our tour.  But it was wonderful to sit in the courtyard before and after the visit, watching its many pigeons and other school children chasing and feeding them ground pieces of corn.  Within the monastery itself, a very old library with fragile double wooden balconies was still stocked with books hundreds of years old.  And the tour of the subterranean crypt with the bones of thousands and thousands of people, was appropriately moody and impressive.

Monasterio de San Francisco near the Plaza Mayor

Inside San Francisco

Kids feeding the pigeons in front of San Francisco

Circling birds in early evening

And to end our evening?  We missed getting the chance to eat in one of the city’s traditional bars/restaurants, but we ended up eating some criollo food suggested by our taxi driver—with a band playing full volume to a nearly empty restaurant.  And at the ground floor restaurant of our aging-but-still-grand hotel, we finished our full day at El Bolivarcito for a Pisco sour, where the drink was supposedly first invented.

Dinner of Peruvian criollo food

Ending our night in Lima with a Pisco Sour