Peru-June
30
Awaken kinda groggy. A difficult night’s sleep. What was I thinking when booking a room for
the entire family? I guess I was
thinking of dollar signs and how nice it would be to co-exist in harmony with
our three teenagers……NOT. Oh well. Paulie and I go out to the breakfast area for
some much needed coffee and meet the nicest lady who will cook to order our
request. Fresh juice, fruit and bread,
cheese, ham slices, cooked eggs and warm, steaming café con leche…..just what
the doctor ordered. We enjoy a few
moments of bliss before the grumpy ones awaken to brighten our day. Hudson is too tired to get himself up, so we
allow him to get his beauty sleep with the rest of us get going around
9:30. We are off in search of local
handicraft markets which we understand are close by. We find them and an ATM across the street…..SCORE!! 
The vast array of brightly colored cloth, alpaca sweaters, musical instruments, silver jewelry and any assortment of other exotic and never before seen items are all lined up, stall after stall. We tentatively, at first, amble through the various stalls and after about an hour, make our first purchase – a baby alpaca sweater for Sam. Then we are off and running – a wrap for Annie, a woven purse, etc. We decide to tame our purchases until maybe the second day....duh. While we are dizzy with excitement, Paulie lingers in the doorways checking out the World Cup matches on the TV’s that are omnipresent around the market. We find yet another market across the street. After several hours, we make our way back to the hotel to grab Hudson so we can get a bite to eat. We make it no more than the corner store, before we are all gulping down the warm empanadas at the nearby bakery. We move on walking and talking and trying to figure out where we are actually going….when we find a safe taxi to drive us to the a park near the ocean front area of town. Parque Kennedy is home to the city's vast cat community….all shapes, colors and sizes call this place home. We meander through the park and out the other side, when, much to Paulie’s dismay, we find yet another place to shop! This place is a re-seller of some of the top brands in the US – Vineyard Vines, North Face, Free People, Madewell, Southern Proper among other big name clothing lines that have their products produced in the ultra-soft Pima cotton of Peru. Well…..Hudson is now in heaven. He stocks up on two Vineyard Vines shirts and four Southern Proper t-shirts for the hefty sum of $22……hard to beat a deal like that. Afterward, we finally make our way to the Pacific Ocean….not as far as one might think (about 15 city blocks). It is hard to appreciate the view because the city is covered in fog most of the time and today is no exception. We check out the wonderful sculptures that are strewn about the park and then, feeling a bit hungry, decide to find a place to eat. There is some dissention in the ranks as to where to eat and Sam and Hudson opt for fried Popeye chicken. Paulie, Annie and I do not. We are so tired of walking, but are freaked out by the reports of getting into the wrong taxi and getting robbed so we continue walking and before we know it, we have arrived in our neighborhood. We rest up before dinner and then, afterward, call it a very tired and early night.
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