Lima

So Lima was great. One of the most interesting things I found about it was all the different types of architecture. Because of the earthquakes buildings are destroyed and rebuilt often, while keeping what survives and building onto it, so it is kind of like a melting pot of styles. I loved it and thought it was beautiful and interesting.  

We spent a day at the Plaza de Armas and just happened to be at the Presidentail Palace at the time of the changing of the gaurds. It was super fun to watch and we were glad that we didn't miss it. We spent the whole afternoon exploring.

When it came time to go back to our hotel we ran into some difficulty getting home. We found that hardly anyone spoke any English and we spoke very little Spanish so we couldn't communicate with the taxi drivers about where we needed to go. It was stressful because we didn't want to use just any taxi -lots of them looked super sketchy and like they were about to fall apart. We walked around for over an hour trying to find someone to help us or a cab that looked like we could use it, eventually I was getting a little overwhelmed so we decided that we would take a break and go get some ice cream. Unfortunetly our timing was off for that to, while we were waiting in the ice cream line two guys started talking right in front of us and before we knew if there was a drug deal taking place. We had no idea as we couldn't understand anything anyone was saying, so we decided to forgo the ice cream and try and get home again. Eventually we found a taxi that looked okay so we hoped in it and were able to communicate to the driver to take us to the mall that was only about 4 blocks from our hotel and then we just walked the rest of the way.

Miraflores

I feel like our trip was planned perfectly, which is really something considering we didn't know anything while planning. Every place that we went was increasingly overwhelming for me, but because we had been in the previous place I was able to handle it, if that makes any sense.
 
We started in Lima, which is a really crazy, really big city! Lima is the biggest city in South America, there are almost 10 million people living there. It began badly with my luggage being lost and trying to deal with LAN airlines to locate it, which they were unable to. Then leaving the airport was super stressful, the traffic was horrendous! It didn't seem like anyone obeyed traffic laws, which is always especially stressful for me! Driving people would squish in as close as possible to the vehicle in front, beside, behind, anywhere they could inch their way forward... it was pure craziness, and this craziness was just magnified by the fact that no one spoke English... It could have also been the fact that we had flown over night so we were running on next to no sleep. By the time we got to the hotel my nerves were thin, and I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

Best decision ever was staying in the Miraflores district! I loved Miraflores!! We stayed at the Radisson, the continental breakfast is beyond amazing, if you ever stay in Lima I highly recommend this hotel! Once we got settled there we set off to go find a few things to replace my lost luggage. The funny thing about Peru is that they close everything down from around 11 to 1, so of course our luck had it that we got to the mall at 11. So we walked around for a while until we found a place to eat, which was a little stressful cause a lot of the restaurants only had menus in Spanish and the waiters only spoke Spanish. We did finally settle on a restaurant, and the food was so good, actually all of our food in Miraflores was so good!!

We just hung out all day enjoying the beautiful scenery. In the evening we decided that we had better take a turn paragliding. It was super cool! So beautiful! And just an all around cool experience.