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.