This is one of the elements I do remember from our first trip, this walk along the Malecon, but this time we went further than before - it stays mostly flat but for a few areas that dip down, and it is here where there are paths that take you from the Malecon cliff-top to the beach below (way below, we did not do this). Probably nothing in Lima is as notable from a visual perspective as these cliffs that go basically straight down a few hundred feet, with four lanes of road and about twenty further feet of beach between the end of the cliff and hte Pacific. From this angle, the Pacific for certain looks imposing and not too friendly to dip in, unless you are one of the many surfer types that were doing so.
The Malecon stretches for about 6 km or something - of which we walked maybe 2 before turning off as we were now within earshot of our lunch spot, the well reputed, well frequented La Mar Cebicheria, a lunch only spot under a canopy roof tucked into a corner of a road. I'm probably way underselling my description here, as the place is well adorned and is packed, and continually has a line. We had to wait about 20 minutes and bt the time we left aroudn 1:45 it was way more lengthy of a line.
The place is a haven for seafood in every way, with us splitting two ceviches and two tiraditos, my favorite of which being the 'Tiradito de la 90s' (unsure why the name) with cream of aji amarillo. It was excellent, but in reality all their food was excellent. Maido and this are the two repeats of the trip food wise, and I guess it was good to get both repeats out of the way early - but it was still fun to eat at both.
After La Mar we wandered for a bit as we had planned to go the Huaca Pucllana ruins but very late in teh game figured out you need to make an advanced booking. Anyway, from there we went to the the MALI (the fancy initialization of the Lima Art Museum) which is housed on one corner of the giant Parque de Exposicion. The Art Museum was nice and quick, a jaunt through Peruvian pre-history, the Incan period, the Spanish reign and post-Spain, with a large collection of Indigenous art - including a really nice gallery that showed paintings that had all the trappings of Catholic scenes but with their own Gods instead.
Downstairs was a couple collections of modern art, one with quasi erotic art which apparently seems to just be a thing in Peru. Anyway, it somehow was less clearly erotic than the collection the day prior at the Larco Museum. After the museum we wandered around the well manicured lawns of the Parque de Exposicion, which was just so damn green. From there we went to the Parque John Kennedy / Parque 7 de Junio (they're next to each other), which are much smaller but unsurprisingly so since they are smack dab in the middle of the Miraflores part of the city.
It is hard to get over how green the city is, and how well manicured each of these parks are. There are always people around tending to the flower beds and parks, watering them, looking after them. I'm sure it is partially a way to keep everyone employed, but it is truly nice to see.
From there we went bar hopping, which is not something we will ever avoid if given the chance. This is the one day we don't have a michelin star dinner, so we had a bit more time to kill before dinner to explore.
The street was a little gulley off of Parque 7 de Junio, which had about 10 bars. A few of them were craft beer bars and cervecerias, of which two we went to, and made a commitment to come back. The first was BarBarian, which had a really nice vibe if a bit too commercial. The beer was good, but nothing too heavy/hard/high ABV - clearly a place more meant for people to have a good time even more than drink great beer.
The second was Clan Cerveceria, which was more my style, with multipel really high ABV beers in small amounts - including two above 10%. We didn't have those now, but just a couple good 7% IPAs in a nice setting. They had an odd "you have to order food" rule, which fries was an acceptable ord4er so it wasn't to meaningful, but was still interesting nonetheless given we hadn't faced this in any of the other bars we went to.
Dinner was supposed to be more low key, algiht as a restaurant Mayta is very much on the rise as another brilliant inclusion to Lima's food scene. But when we got there, in its beautiful, green, airy space in the swanky San Isidro neighborhood, instead of going a la carte, we got a 7-course, very reasonably priced tasting menu. Given that, I'll cover this as well in a separate post (no idea when these posts will actually occur, in all honesty.
After dinner to walk off the unintended feast, we walked through San Isidro from Mayta to Carnaval - a weird walk through an admittedly beautiful, rich, neighborhood, with the weird Pacific mist wafting all over. I really have no idea how to describe the weather - it is very cloudy, very foggy (though only parts of the city - more inland is fine), but there is still an everpresent 0% chance of rain...
Carnaval was a lot more crowded today, and we waited a good 30 minutes before getting seated. Inside they were doing good crowd control (everyone needs a seat - no standing). The other little secret about why the wait was so long despite there not being a sizable line is that no one leaves - and for all the right reasons. The vibe in the place is great, the drinks are all great. We stayed from about 11:45 to 2:15, and while it was 50% capacity by the time we left, there were mutliple tables that were there before us that remained. It was not the planned way to spend the rest of the night, but like we did with Mayta when presented with an unforseen option, we took advantage of it.
