Lima Love

If I had to make a list of cities that I would NEVER live in, I think Lima might be number one. I fail to see the appeal of that city. Now, I've really only been in a Lima four times....for less than 48 hours each time, so I admit that I haven't seen very much of the city. But I think I've only been to Chicago four or five times and that city would be one of my top choices on my "Cities I want to live in" list.

This trip to Lima was definitely more fun and enjoyable than past trips, but I still don't see why people come from all over the country to live in Lima when Cusco and Trujillo are much prettier and nicer.
(Here we are with Mando's sister, Estela, his Dad, and his great-aunt, Tia Chapita.)

I am grateful for Lima, however, because we were able to make our first entry in the Tirado family travel annals. (Our own little version of the Rockwood family annals...funny stories from our travel experiences). We arrived in Lima around 11:45 p.m. on the 25th, and took a taxi to the hotel that was right around the corner from Mando's aunt's house. We had been traveling since 7:oo in the morning, going on pretty much no sleep, sweaty and stinky from holding and chasing Nicholas all day long, so we were really ready to just collapse into bed and take a nice long shower in the morning.

We were going to stay in a hotel on the other side of the street, but we f0und a cheaper hotel closer to his aunt's house that looked really nice in the pictures on the website. We were saving about 50 bucks and it was only one night, probably only about eight hours total, that we would be there, so we thought, "Even if it's not that great, it's only a few hours anyway... totally worth saving 50 bucks." Cue daunting music...duh, duh, duhhhhh.

We get out of the taxi, walk into the lobby and there's no room to roll the suitcases because there are random wooden poles of different sizes holding up the ceiling. I thought that was a bad omen, but I was still hoping it was just remodeling or something, and the rooms would, of course, be fine. We climbed the stairs, sleeping toddler and four suitcases in tow, where we opened the door (which had a click-lock like the kind you'd find on a bathroom door) to a small room just big enough for the double bed and a small patio table and plastic yard chairs. Oh my goodness, I'm laughing just thinking about it. One entire wall was a window open to the street. I tried to go close the slats of the window (it was a picture window on one side, and the other half had glass slats that opened and closed like venetian blinds. Do you know what I'm talking about?), but when I touched the glass, one of the slats came crashing down and shattered on the floor....oops. So now we had a big hole with nothing....and no way to block out the city sounds or the air.

Next I looked in the bathroom where I found a toilet with no toilet seat, a big hole in the cieling where I could see the next room, and a sink that shot out rusty water. No soap, no towels, and I think there was a fourth a roll of toilet paper. So the next morning we ended up taking showers and using t-shirts to towel off with. I kept envisioning Dad in the parking lot of a motel with a roach crawling into his shirt and laughing. The whole thing just made me chuckle. From the hard, tiny bed with a cold breeze blowing in from the window all night, to watching the hole in the bathroom ceiling while I showered to make sure no heads poked through to peep on me---- it was all an expeirience that cements my feelings of "love" for Lima. :)
(We thought it would take a while for Nicholas to get used to everyone, but he LOVED the attention and immediately took to everyone we met!)

As a side note: Every where else we've been here in Peru has been very nice :) That was an exceptional example of grossness and was to be expected when you decide to only pay $20 for a hotel room in a big city. It is not in any way a statement on Peru in general.

As for Nicholas, he was GREAT in the traveling experience. What a trooper. He took some great naps during all of the flights, and he was pretty calm and easy to deal with throughout the rest of the time. We had a layover in Houston, just enough time to get a good dinner and let him run around playing soccer in the gate area.

After almost 48 hours of straight traveling, here's my happy baby playing peek-a-boo with the safety information card on our last flight to Trujillo. What a great little guy! :)