Lima is like, huge. For real.

ENORMOUS. Lima is ENORMOUS. And not just in terms of populations (which it is... metropolitan Lima has almost nine million people), but in sheer square mileage. The city just goes on and on, and I only have one short week to explore it! I could spend the whole month I'm allotted here in Lima and never see it all!

But I made some efforts in that pursuit today. After my 9 AM run with my new friend Ani (three miles through Miraflores, along the coast again), we left at about 11 AM to take a tour of Lima. Here's some pictures of places we visited!

A mosaic in one of the coastal parks here in Lima.
The whole park looks like this.

Brightly coloured buildings like this one are all over Lima.

This is an archaeological site that we visited. The structure
is adobe and pre-Inca.

Some of the colonial influences in Lima; Plaza de Armas.

The architecture in Lima varies wildly. This building was too cute.

The highlight of today was our visit to the cathedral here in the city. It was spectacular. This blog is not nearly enough space to show all of the awesomeness, so I've uploaded most of my pictures to my photostream on Flickr! You can see all the wonderful splendor here: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/64043091@N07/sets/72157626972677562/)

And here are a few previews:

The ceiling of the Cathedral.

The tomb of Francisco Pisarro, conquistador. It was an
honour to be in his presence.

A skull in the catacombs below the cathedral.

And speaking of catacombs, there was a second religious institution that we visited, the San Francisco Church. They also house an extensive underground network of catacombs (MUCH larger than the cathedrals, which was only two rooms) that I was very fortunate to visit.

I'm telling you, I felt like Indiana Jones when I was walking through here, seeing these things:

That is a skull, stuck between some masonry. Above a pit
of other skulls. SO COOL.

Yes, that's a pit of skulls. Yes, it's deep. Much deeper than
this picture can accurately portray.

Another pit of skulls. Please note the one on top who
has had his cranium sawed off. I wonder if that was pre or
post mortem? The cause of the mortem, I would assume...

Three buddies hanging out in an alcove.

A bin of neatly organized femurs. Reminds me of home.

The catacombs were a fantastic experience. It was a little claustrophobic... all of the ceilings and doorways were inches above my head (short little me even had to bend over to fit through some of the archways), it was dimly lit and very dusty and had a really Tomb Raider sort of vibe. I felt like a corpse was going to jump out on me at any moment and I would have to gun them down with my dual-wielded uzis.

Whew. That was a picture heavy post. And that's all for tonight. I still have another post to write! I'm getting behind!