lima at a leisurely pace

ever since coming into lima, we have been taking it at an extremely slow pace. after we settled into the flying dog hostel, we went to larco mar, a mall right at the ocean front that was built into a cliff. it was a bit touristy, but we had some hearty food court food for lunch - i ended up having pork brochettes, deep fried banana, and some fries, which were pretty good albeit a bit heavy! smutty and i also tried a - gasp - burger king cono - it was surprisingly better than the mcdonald's vanilla cono!!!!

on that note, that same day, we went back to mcdonald's only to find that THEY DO NOT HAVE DULCE DE LECHE CONOS IN PERU. WHAAAAAAAAT!!!!! most of us had not had one since may 12, and were shocked! cheryl on the other hand, was ecstatic to see that the mcdonald's still served the hybrid chocolate vanilla cone as they had phased out chocolate in canada.

on yet another dulce de leche note, they do not call dulce de leche by its proper name in peru. they call it manjarblanco! and on yet another note, yesterday kavitha and i had an intense craving for churros (if you recall from earlier posts, deep fried dough covered in sugar) and were referred to a restaurant called manolo's - they had churros filled with vanilla, chocolate, or dulce de leche. i, of course, ordered the dulce de leche one, and it was seriously the most delicious/heart attack/diabetes inducing food ever. SUPER DELICIOUS!

we have also been able to check out the chinatown in lima - apparently the biggest in south america. my sister had forwarded me an article about lima in the new york times, and it referred us to a restaurant called salon capon - it was surprisingly good! although only the owners were chinese and the wait staff were all peruvian, it took me a really long and hard time to order roasted duck and noodles, usually something easy for me to do in toronto. also, looking around in chinatown, there were maybe 3 chinese people max that we saw on the main street. super strange! it was almost like the chinatown in havana.

another piece of crazy news - we ended up going out last night!!! WHAT!!!! of the 55 days kavitha and i have travelled, she has gone out 3 times, and this is only my second time. we ended up going to a terrible club an dancing awkwardly! (it was very salsa focused). however, what came out of the night were a couple new dance moves - the q-tip, deodorant application, face washing, and hair washing.

breakfast at the hostel has also been great - they give us meal tickets to the restaurant under the hostel, which includes either fruit salad/juice/coffee, or eggs/toast/juice/coffee, which is very solid.

keith, kavitha and i also did some laundry - totally solid!!! ahhh. our last load before we head home. on a laundry related note, i lost my favourite marc atlan heart t-shirt while i was in aguascalientes. NOOOOOOOOO!!! thankfully i know where to order another one.

we also checked out a graffiti sticker exhibit called stick it, which was very neat. i have seen graffiti exhibits, but never a graffiti sticker exhibit. very cool!

lastly this morning we woke up a bit late and walked to barranco, the adjacent municipality. they had a bunch of cute restaurants and art galleries and one boutique that had some awesome peruvian designed clothing. we still need to figure out what we are doing tonight!

2 more days until home!