Come with us on our bus tour!

Today we went on a bus tour to many of the most important sites in Lima. We thought it would be fun to vicariously take you all along with us.

This is outside the San Pedro cathedral. Our tour guide introduced it as the grandest cathedral in Peru, and in her opinion the world. She said that some people find it too gaudy, but to most it is an important place of worship.

This is the main chapel of the San Pedro cathedral. The people who built it were very skilled in working with gold, and much of the inside is made with 24k gold. We tried to get a better picture, there was a mass and we had to move quickly through.

Just one block from the San Pedro cathedral is Torre Tagle. It is the main office building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The brown boxes on the outside are balconies. They were designed so that when you are standing in them you can see outside, but no one can see you from the street. We were lucky to be one of few groups to have a private tour of the inside.

Here is Jeff and I on the inside of Torre Tagle.

And here is Jeff taking his natural place at the conference room table as Ambassador to Peru.

This is the Plaza de San Martin, probably the most beautiful park we have seen so far in Lima. San Martin is one of the main people who helped liberate much of South America from Spain.

Here is Carolyn in the Hotel Bolivar, located in the Plaza de San Martin. Simon Bolivar the leader of the revolution and San Martin was his co-liberator. When the hotel was built, they wanted to name it a Quechua word for cemetery, but decided that no one would want to stay at a hotel called Cemetary. Instead, they decided to call it the Hotel Bolivar because it was commonly thought that "in front of every San Martin there should always be a Bolivar." As an interesting side note, John Wayne stayed here, as well as another famous actress from the '50s American actress who got wasted from Pisco Sour (the national beverage of choice) and danced on the tables.

This piece of fine art is located in the restaurant at the Hotel Bolivar. The man has a square head because one of the early tribes (pre-Incan) would place wood braces around their heads to form it into a square shape because they thought it was beautiful. We dedicate this picture to Jennifer, a true connoisseur of fine art.

Here is Jeff in front of Peru's National Cathedral.

The old part of Lima has large squares with these beautiful yellow buildings.

This is the Government Palace, Peru's equivalent of the White House, where President Alan Garcia lives. It was orginally built by order of Francisco Pizarro (the spanish conquistador of South America). It was then inhabited by the vice royalty of Spanish Columbia. Since independence it has been used as the presidential palace, though Fujimori was the first president to actually live in it. We got to see the changing of the guard, or at least the first 20 minutes of it. Apparently it is a pretty long process with a band and stuff. It was pretty cool, but there were so many people it was hard to see anything.

After the changing of the guard, we left for the catacombs. On our way we ran into a group of young Peruvians from the jungle. They had come to perform a dance at a show after the changing of the guard. We didn't get to see them dance, but we will be going to a show in a few weeks where we can see it. They also had snakes with them that don't show up in the picture.

This is Santa Domingo, a dominican church that houses the catacombs. What look like stripes on the outside of the church are actually birds that sit in rows on the walls.

Inside Santa Domingo Jeff snapped a picture of an old library that was used by the priests. It had books that were from the 16th century. The large books were used by the priests to read from at their meetings. Above the main chapel, there is a terrace where they would hold these meetings. The books had very large print, and they would place them on a revolving stand so that everyone could sing and recite together. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of the room. All of the priests sat in folding seats. When they were allowed to sit, they would fold the chair down and use it as a chair. When they had to stand, they would fold the seat up. On the back of each seat was a little ledge to rest their behinds on while they were standing for very long periods of time. They called them "mercy seats."

Outside Santa Domingo there were tons of Rock Pigeons (aka Rock Doves, or just plain Pigeons by those not well-versed in the world of fowl). There were a bunch of little kids chasing them and it was so cute we had to take a few pictures.

After seeing all the grandeur of Lima, we hopped back on the bus and drove back to the embassy. Most residents of Lima live in extreme poverty and their are many make-shift homes on the hills or near the edges of the city. It was such a contrast from everything else that we saw. We returned much more grateful for the small apartment that we live in.