Sunday in Lima

A nice Sunday morning 68 outside and a comfortable 70 inside. It's quiet outside because the main street on Sunday's from 7am til 1pm is for bicycles and other motor-less wheels. Later we will have lunch at the Sunday Market food fest, great food selections. I hope Laurie takes pic's of the food stands.

September Food Fest Sold Out!!!

So says this report today from Living in Peru!  Obviously I didn't know anything about advance tickets being available or I would have bought some! I vowed last year when we missed this extravaganza because we were out of the country that we would go this year!  The article says that tickets will still be available at the time of the event, but still!

The Corner Store

When you get right down to it, I realize I've always needed to live in a place with a corner store. It is totally unreasonable to jump into a car and drive somewhere just to pick up milk or a loaf of bread. Running out of toilet paper should require a major shopping trip. I used to think that it was necessary to live in a large city to have things like the corner store which stocked everything you need. I realize now that it's more a fact of the culture and the lifestyle of the people. In the little village where we lived in Spain, everything needed was available within a few blocks. In Florida everyone seemed to accept that it was normal to get in the car ever time one left the house. Here in Lima, one could easily spend one's entire life in a neighborhood, with no need ever to travel to a big store or a shopping mall. I love that I can walk around the corner and pick up a sandwich or an empanada for breakfast, toothpaste, toilet paper, butter, milk, ice cream or olive oil. If they don't have what I want, I can always walk over to the next street, where there are 3 more bodegas to choose from. I can buy fresh fruits and vegetables (although I prefer the cart on the corner or the market for these), yogurt, sodas, beer, wine or pastries, not to mention cell phone card refills, cheese or salami. I love the comfortable feel of the neighborhood store.

This article about our Peruvian bodegas made me smile. If the writer is right, my beloved corner store will still be around for a long time to come.

Mother's Day with Mamacita!

How lucky I am to have an "adopted family" on Mother's Day!  Our friend Eliana invited us to celebrate in the afternoon with her and her mom and her brother and his wife and kids. We had a fabulous barbeque on the wonderful rooftop terrace of her new apartment. What a great view - and what a great place for a party! Fun afternoon, nice walk home, perfect day. And a nice way to get my mind off the fact that my wonderful international guests really did have to return to Olympia, Washington, leaving our house feeling oh so empty!

Happy Mother's Day

Imagine living on a treacherous river and being 16 hours from the nearest clinic by canoe when health care is needed. DB Peru works hard to bring better health care access to the people on the Amazon River. I've met the founder of this NGO and hope to go on one of their trips into the jungle this year. Read about their work here and if you're looking for an organization to support in honor of your mother, this would be a good one to consider.

Day 17

I refuse to call it the last day. It's just Day # 17. Madelle and I walked to Parque Kennedy; there was a photography competition going on. We got to vote for our favorite out of 100 photos of local things and places. Next year I am going to enter the contest. The contest was sponsored by the graphic design and photography institute that I want to take classes from. The park was quiet but nice. There were people taking pictures of kids with their mom's for Mom's Day. I stopped and got a jugo de lucuma con leche so I could talk Madelle into tasting it. "It tastes like caramel," she said.  I think she liked it. From the park, it was another nice little walk to meet Gene and Larry at Punta Sal for lunch, which as always was delicious. The pisco sours weren't bad either! I'm hoping they will help M & L to sleep well on the plane tonight!  :-)  Their plane leaves a few minutes before midnight, so they'll be leaving the house around nine. They will be home less than 24 hour later! I don't want to see them leave.

El Centro

I had been wanting to get everyone up to Lima centro for a walk around Plaza de Armas and Plaza Bolivar and some of the surrounding sites. Today was finally the day. Unfortunately the new Museo de Gastronomico had decided this would be a good day to close for maintenance, in spite of the fact that according to the handwritten notice on the front door, they definitely should have been open all day today! We had a nice tour of the San Francisco monastery to look at the bones of the 70,000 or so people buried there. We enjoyed the awesome architecture and walking around the streets. I love Lima. We also went again to Hotel Bolivar for our second pisco sours of the day. In spite of the fact that Gene and I had been totally underwhelmed by the place the first time we went, we thought we should show our guests this beautiful and historic place, since everyone else seems to rave about it. Frankly the pisco sours weren't any better than the 2 sol sours at the little hole in the wall place where we had our first of the day while walking there. I think in the future I will show guests the beautiful lobby and restaurant and then take them somewhere else for the drinks and snacks. But as always, the beautiful plazas were alive with  people and we enjoyed just being there. The trip up on the metropolitano was quick and pleasant.

Peru Takes its Culture to Peru, Nebraska!

What happens when our Peru meets Peru, Nebraska? This is a really fun video!
The new ambassadors of Peru — including chefs Gastón Acurio and Javier Wong, surfer Sofia Mulanovich, writer Rafo León — eat ceviche, dance huaynos, drink pisco and more with the 569 residents of Peru, Nebraska.

Back to Barranco!

We love Barranco! Including the charming rail road car turned vegetarian restaurant!

Oldest Pisco Distillery

Interesting article. My bet is that pisco will soon be the newest "in" drink in the US.

Magic Water!

Highlight of the trip for our friends, I think! We finally made it to the Circuito Magico del Agua. Awesome, as was the food at Tanta before we jumped on the bus to Lima for the show.

Afternoon in Barranco

Madelle and Larry and I had a great time walking around Barranco, the plaza, the famous Puente de los Suspiros (Bridge of Sighs), gawking at the incredible old homes. And we stopped at a really charming little restaurant right on the park, where they actually offered 3 types of fish, along with several other items, on the menu. For 8 soles each, we ate like kings again. In the process of the afternoon, the three of us discovered that I need to live in Barranco, so we had news to tell Gene, who had stayed home to paint today, on our return home! We also walked by another restaurant, which looked cute and had a very interesting looking buffet at lower prices than the norm so we are thinking that another trip to Barranco is in order. In the evening, we hopped on the bus up to the Parque de la Reserva to see the fabulous lighted fountains. Desafortunadamente, Laurie had failed to notice that the fountains are only open Wednesday to Sunday (gasp!), so although we had an interesting bus ride up and back, we plan to repeat it tomorrow night. After returning to Miraflores, we checked out a new (to us) Italian restaurant which friend Ron had suggested, right near Parque Kennedy. We had passed by it many times and ignormed it because I had thought it looked too “touristy.” Now we know that it is a really cool little place with very good food at reasonable prices. We will be back. It occurred to me that Italian always seems to be a good choice, as far as everyone finding something that they really like. Madelle is a vegetarian and Larry does not care for ceviche and some of the other Peruvian specialties like papas huancaina, so some places don't work well for us.

Busy Week with Guests!

It's been such a lovely time visiting with our friends Madelle and Larry, but then we were talking and realized that already we couldn't remember exactly what we have done everyday. So back to Picasa and a look at the daily fotos to do some note taking!

Wednesday, 4/20 – late night arrival. We were like a couple of kids...

The Chef Speaks

In a country famous for its food, its most famous chef says that his is not the best restaurant in Lima. Gastón Acurio says there are 4 or 5 restaurants that should be on the best restaurants in the world with him. We have never eaten at his flagship restaurant, Astrid & Gastón, which is near where we live in a totally nondescript building down a side street in Miraflores, but we plan to eat there soon. We've eaten many times at Tanta (bread in Quechua) and I love the comfortable feel of this upscale cafe/panaderia, one of which is in easy walking distance of our house through the lovely Parque de los Olivos. La Mar, which specializes in seafood, serves awesome food and is a really fun place for lunch. We ate there once last year and I've been meaning to get back there. But then there are always so many new places to try that we just haven't made it yet. His Pasquale Hnos franchisesare said to offer great sandwiches but we've never tried them. Panchita, an anticucheria, is a couple of years old and I don't even know where it is, but it's somewhere around here and I definitely need to check it out! Apparently Gastón has plans to open several new and different types of restaurants. We need to hurry up and experience the ones that already exist!

Lunch in the Market Again-Best Deal Around!

As we had promised last week, Madelle and I took Gene and Larry to the food fair at the market for some of that fabulous fish. We had raved so much about the fried trucha that all of us ordered the same thing. And where M and I had shared one portion last week (and also a portion of causa), this week we each ordered one. So of course nobody really had room to try other things. And then we got our fish and it was corvina! We now know that we had got the trucha the week before because, due to holy week, the markets had run out of the corvina (sea bass) and so the cook used the trucha. We also now know (for next week!) which booth always has the trucha! The atmosphere at the food fair is run. I'm thinking I may have to go there every week end. They are there Friday through Sunday every week and I think have some of the best food offerings around (and a nice selection, too) at great prices. We even got 5 sol pisco sours!