Founded by the Spanish in the XVIth century, Lima is a curious mix of a modern mega city, skyscrapers, malls and amazing seaview apartments in Miraflores, old villas in a romantic hippie ambiance in Barranco and areas of colonial architecture especially in its historical downtown, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

For those who don’t know, it was declared the “Gastronomy Capital of the Americas” since 2006 and it has a wonderful dining reputation with chefs from all over the world and few restaurants in the “Top 50 best restaurants of the world”.

So how best could we celebrate the start of a 3 weeks holiday in 4 (+ Bear’s brother and his girlfriend) if not with a nice tasty dinner at a well-known chef, trying some local specialties? It was delicious! And we were all happy to see each other again; we made a city tour, wandered on the streets, went to nice bars to have pisco sour cocktails and spent an evening at Maravillas del Agua where more than 10 fountains have music and lights shows each evening. Yes, it is good to be with friends!

But despite its nice architecture in some areas and its good cuisine, none of us was impressed as it is still dirty in some places, with ugly, unfinished buildings in some others, too crowded, polluted and with bad traffic.

However, we were happy to see each other again and share stories of the last 8-9 months…wow, so much time has already passed…but so much fun is yet to come!