So for those of you who know my family you are pretty sure of one thing: we never really travel. Sure we head to the beach or the mountains for a getaway just like the rest of you. The only thing is…we never really go anywhere else. I’ve heard stories of my parents’ younger days; my dad’s backpacking trip through the Rockies and my mom’s trip to Europe to put that high school French to good use. But since then…we’ll the Schwartz’s have been rather, well, stationary. I’m not sure if it was intentional, the not going anywhere more than a few states away from North Carolina, or it was just the lack of incentive. Either way, when I chose to come here to Peru it was a pretty big step in the Schwartz family travel log. So when my parents and my brother decided that they wanted to come to Peru to visit me I was rather surprised. That’s a lot of travel to log for us.
We kept it simple. We could have shoved a trip to Cusco in the week long period that my parents were here. Or we could have tried to go and visit my site (but from the weather report I got today it’s probably for the best that we didn’t go that route). But since I’m a boring person and lacked the vision to figure out something close to Lima to do for the holidays we just explored Lima. I know I’ve said before how much I hate Lima, and that fact still stands; but I can honestly say that Lima is way better when you’re sleeping in a super sweet hotel that your parents are paying for and not the hostel that I usually frequent. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hostel-home away from home (away from home), but it’s not quite 4 star quality.
As my mom put it we basically ate our way though Lima. I got them to try all of my favorite dishes: Aji de Gallina, Lomo Saltado, and some good seafood dishes. They liked almost all of it. Although my brother might not be the biggest fan of Chifa (Peruvian Chinese food) seeing as how it wasn’t the biggest fan of him (eww GI issues). But the food seemed to go over well with them. There was Inca Kola drunk, campo-turkey eaten and Peruvian desserts inhaled.
We did do a few touristy things; we went to the national museum and they got a few history lessons on Peru, or at least some of Peru’s more famous exports--namely, the potato. Yep, all of those tubers are direct descendents of a Peruvian papa. We also went to go see some of the parks in Lima, the lovers park (featuring a huge statue of two people making out), Kennedy Park and Larco Mar (the both of which were full of plastic cows), and the water park. I think the water park was the highlight of my time in Lima. Now this isn’t the type of water park with big slides and splash mountains, nope, this one’s full of fountains. Sounds boring, but since seeing is way easier than writing, here are a few pictures:
To top off the cool water effects, there were laser light shows and on New Year’s Eve there were fireworks!
