Sight-seeing

A lunch. I ordered this because I was intrigued by its name, TacuTacu, which is for the big heap of rice. It was a bit too much for me, but interesting...Next is the entrance hall atrium at Gran Hotel Bolivar in Plaza San Martin. Gran Hotel Bolivar (Jiron de la Union) is known for its Pisco Sours (yummy indeed) as well as its maintained 1920s retro atmosphere. I know a beautiful old hotel in Yokohama that has not changed much since the 20s as well, and represents turn of the century Western grandness. Hotel Bolivar reminded me of it, and although old, Tesla and I dug it. We went to see the Monasterio de San Francisco (or rather we stumbled across it and decided to go) that houses underground catacombs of 70,000 burials. Perhaps our tour showed us only a corner, but frankly, I wasn't impressed. I've been to the ones in Paris and that was memorable. However, the Monastery was amazing. Beautiful wall and ceiling art with heavy Moorish influcence, and rooms where you could almost feel old monk souls still gathering to make important decisions. There was a library full of old books, some giant ones that the monks used to read sermons as a group and needed to see the words from many feet away. The books were so old that I worried about their condition since they were just sitting on shelves unprotected although visitors couldn't touch them. Dav fell in love with the library. It had such character - long walls filled with books, dusty light shining through a roof window, old wooden desks - too bad we weren't allowed to take pictures. I did mange to get just 3 pictures secretly when I detached from our tour group when Tesla started fussing. These are shots from Plaza de Armas in Central Lima where the president resides. There is a statue of Francisco Pizarro on horseback which used to be in the center of the plaza, but the clergy too offense to the horse's butt facing the cathedral, so had it moved to a corner. This last pic is from a restaurant (La Muralla in Parque de la Muralla) that I wanted to go to but it wasn't open. Instead, we got to see that it was built right next to ruins; here is an old courtyard.