Casa de Baraybar and the First Run

Buenos noches, my pudding pops!

This evening's blog post is brought to you by INCA KOLA and the utter joy that is the Sublime bar.

The most delicious chunk of nuts and milk chocolate ever.

It tastes like carbonated liquid bubble gum.

These two snacks are Peruvian natives, and they are sold at the bodega (a teensy little shop run by a Peruvian woman that only speaks Spanish and wild hand gestures) that is next door to the Casa de Baraybar.

Which brings me to the point of one half of this blog post!

The Casa de Baraybar is a bed and breakfast style accommodation in the lovely Miraflores region of the city of Lima. We're steps away from the beach here at the Casa! It's lovely.

The courtyard of the Casa from our balcony.

The view of Lima from our balcony/doorway.

My bed in the brick alcove. It's not terribly
comfortable, but it's doable.

Our ceiling, which is tiled!

So those are our digs for Lima---the next six days. The Casa is a very nice place---clean, fresh towels every day, no roaches, plated dinners and a fruit/pastry breakfast, reliable wireless (free) internet, bathrooms that look like they're probably safe to use and a great location in Miraflores. I couldn't be happier.

My actual events for today began at 8:30. I enjoyed my first breakfast in Peru (a banana, pear juice, three rolls with butter, some sort of bizarre meat-paste rolled up in dough and a sweet pastry of unknown origin) and we headed out to our first museum.

The Museo Rafael Larco Herrera is an archaeological museum that was founded in 1926 by Peruvian archaeologist Rafael Largo Hoyle. It covers 4,000 years of Peruvian culture and artefacts, and has about 45,000 pieces total. It's storage area is also accessible to visitors (which is unusual for a museum) so that you can see the massive amounts of pottery that the Larco has, sitting on shelves and shelves and shelves as far as the eye can see!

I couldn't fit all my pictures in this one blog post that I wanted you to see, so instead I uploaded them to my Flickr photostream. You can view the complete set here, http://www.flickr.com/photos/64043091@N07/ (and I sincerely hope you will!), however, here are a few highlights:

Yes, that's gold.

It's essentially a pre-Inca beer can. With a skull.

This is one serious necklace.

On top of the museum I also went on my first run in Peru today. It was four miles of nothing but beautiful Pacific coast, superbly maintained parks and happy looking Peruvians walking their dogs or playing with their kids. The weather is fantastic for running---the temperature here floats around 73 degrees all day long. I'm getting up a little earlier tomorrow to run in the morning before we leave for our next grand adventure.

Will report in again tomorrow. <3