On our first day we met up with my friend and colleague, Kat. She and I are on the same team at work and we were so lucky to catch her while she was visiting her family in the city. Her parents even came and picked us up from the airport! We are really grateful for this because every airport has a different taxi system (potentially predatory and definitely anxiety-provoking) and our flight came in at almost 10pm. It would have been an uphill battle to figure it all out.

The next day we got to spend with Kat. Here we are about to have breakfast by the Pacific.

Lima is a classy, gray lady–it’s almost always cloudy there–but we had a rare day of sunshine. Here’s a picture of us walking around the city.

Our main tourist site for the day was Lima’s beautiful cathedral. It was built, unfortunately, on the ruins of the old center of worship for the Lima culture. This seems to be a theme–the church didn’t want to take any chance of backsliding to the old religion.

The cathedral was so huge that we hired a guide to take us around and explain everything. I’ve been to a decent amount of churches and this one felt really exceptional. Or maybe it was the company that made it feel special. 🙂

Here’s Garett looking at an altar made entirely of mahogany wood. The guide told us it was made without any nails.

For lunch we went to a fancy restaurant right next to Huaca Pucllana, a site of Lima culture ruins. It was delicious.

On Tuesday we went to Barranco, a colorful artist neighborhood. On the way we stopped by the Parque del amor to see the famous statue of two lovers.

Some pictures of the art in Barranco. The woman with the hair was made entirely by corrugated cardboard.

Lastly, we met up with a woman, Linda, who was in my Effective Altruism study group about 6 months ago. We were lucky we caught her when she was in Lima–she travels a ton and she’s only here about 1 month a year. We had pisco sours together, which are the national cocktail.