Peru 2019: Day 2: Central Lima & Larco Museum

I started out today with Sandra. We went to central Lima and saw the Church and Convento de San Francisco.

There were tiles from Seville all over the church. It was a delightful surprise.

There was also a pretty amazing library. Unfortunately you couldn't go in.

The ceiling of the church was also surprising.

We then walked to the Plaza de Armas. It was fun seeing this school group along the way.

Another surprise were the buildings around the plaza. They looked like southern Spain--they even had the women's balconies that come from the times of the Arabs in Spain. Although these were built much later, apparently the style stuck.

Yesterday there was a demonstration in the plaza at noon. These guys were ready for action, but it was a very peaceful day.

We went into the main basilica and the most interesting part is Pizzaro's tomb. There is a room covered in mosaics along with his remains.

The church itself was impressive.

As we were leaving the plaza, this band (that is part of the changing of the guard at the presidential palace) came into the park.

The reflections of the plaza in their helmets gave an interesting view of the place.

And, after a military sounding tune. They started playing something with a Latin beat. Here's a short video.

We then drove to the Larco Museum which sits on top of a pyramid. We drove by lots of ruins as we crossed town.

The gardens of the museum were stunning.

This is called a brain cactus. I've never seen one before.

So this museum had some amazing pieces.

They had a ginormous store room with hundreds of pieces--pottery with the same theme was grouped together. Because of the dryness of this part of Peru and the fact that these items were buried in graves--the number of artifacts they have is staggering. The pots show everything from daily life to food to jaguars.