The Historic Parts
Lima is split into a ton of little districts or neighborhoods, each of which has it's own little government, police and emergency force... But there is a big overarching Lima government of the metropolitan area housed in the historic center, right next to the building that houses the national government, and the cathedral and the former home of the archbishop.
Government Palace (above)
Cathedral (below)
A lot of these big historic yellow buildings are the city government offices.
This is the historic center of Lima, surrounded by other historic buildings, many of which are falling apart or being rented by stores to sell goods. This area is highly secure with tons of police walking through or guarding the office buildings.
The rest of the city sort of radiates out from the center, I have been visiting some of these neighborhoods the last few days.
Outside of the historic old center but still in the downtown area are the 1900s buildings that look like vaults with their big gray or brown stone exteriors and with wood or gold doorways housing fancy stores and cafés inside for the well to do(reminds me of Herods). These buildings remind me of typical downtown buildings in the US.
Fancy downtown exteriors eh?
Beyond this area is the sort of typical downtown scenes old buildings, restaurants and stores, warehouses and a few parks. Old churches and small plazas that have been surrounded by larger buildings that take up more and more space.
The historic china town is kind of like a big outdoor market with tons of people shopping for cheap goods. I felt a little weird pulling out my camera just because of the amount of people around me- but I did get this one shot in a less crowded area.
Other than the abundance of goods and people, Lima's china town wasn't all that different from other parts of the city. I guess I did see Chinese healers, astrologists and giant snails for sale... But other than that it's mostly just painted pavilions and a few Chifa places with dimsum and ducks in the window.
On the way into downtown I stopped at two of the big museums but they were pretty disappointing. Each only had one exhibition going on and seemed to be closed for renovations beyond that.
One of the exhibitions was on the history of Lima. The other was on a local archeological site. So similar to what I have been seeing elsewhere. Both of these museums were housed in a large park. Along with the Italian art museum which I didn't go into - but it looks like this:
Foggy Impressions
Lima is known for it's fog/pollution/perpetual cloud cover- especially in the winter(which is now).
One of the other downtown neighborhoods I walked through reminded me of my childhood impression of Minneapolis.
When I was a kid Minneapolis was Gotham city, it was this big scary gray, dark noir place where if you walked down the wrong alley your parents would be killed in front of you. Minneapolis was dirty and confusing, it was always gray, it was so big you couldn't see more than a block ahead of you. It was for tough people, real hardcore people lived in Minneapolis not nice warm people... Of course as I grew I recognized this was an inaccurate depiction, it started with little havens in the dark, places I would go and it would be exciting and comfortable and in that small place I could have my mind blown... Usually these were concert venues. The dark and scary perception didn't disappear overnight, the scary area dwindled over time until I realized that Minneapolis wasn't very scary at all.
Between the dirty old buildings and the fog, I started getting the impression at one point today that I had entered a sketchy Gotham city neighborhood. The graffiti increased, the garbage increased, the darkness seemed to envelope everything... And I started walking a lot faster, and avoiding looking at things like a tourist. I put my "don't mess with me" face on and took up a little more space.
After a few minutes I realized I was reacting to the winter fog unreasonably. I looked at the faces of the people around me and realized they weren't putting their tough faces on. Sure they were all wearing dark colors but it's winter here, they just had their winter coats on. The children weren't worrying about getting from point a to point b without being messed with. The stores were wide open and welcoming.
I've been told Lima is dangerous and scary... I'm sure it is... But I wonder of the fog makes people more paranoid than they need to be.
The Wealthy Neighborhoods
I already wrote a bunch about Miraflores, but Miraflores is bordered by two other areas I have visited
San Isidro is the business district of Lima and like any business area I saw a lot of big office buildings and fancy hotels and country club looking restaurants. Even some of the fast food places looked more posh than normal. I did however walk into a couple of places that looked like malls from the outside but were pretty bleak on the inside - full of vacant spaces(reminded me of knollwood mall). One repeated pattern I have seen in some older and smaller shopping centers is that they are mixed office/commercial. So there will be stores and then like a call center and then a typical office with cubicles. The workers go to the food court for lunch along with the mall shoppers. I think these places look strange because it feels like you can see the inner workings of the office, but I guess it's just normal here. I found San Isidro to be rather boring and didn't take any pictures.
The other neighborhood I went to briefly is called Barranco.
Known as a sort of bohemian place, it's got a lot of art and a lot of music clubs at night I guess. To me it felt like a small town in the middle of the city. Like turn the corner and you are on Hopkins Main Street- Small one level cafés and antique shops. I am hoping to go back and chill there in the next few days. It seemed much more quiet than the rest of the city, a good place to do some journaling.
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