We spent Friday wandering around the centre of Lima which has a strange mixture of ancient and very modern architecture (including a curved smoke glass tower from where KPMG operates)with many of the buildings retaining their 17th century wooden balconies on the second floor - it also has some of the worst traffic-jams we have ever seen – even worse than Cairo. At no point did we see any relatives of Paddington Bear but they must have been around as one of the local restaurants was offering “Marmalade Sandwich” – really.
On the hillsides to the north of the city there are still the brightly coloured houses of one of the city’s oldest shanties, we walked near some of the edgier districts which had a distinctly uneasy feel to them - a bit like parts of Croydon. We also visited a couple of churches; one was Santo Domingo with its peaceful cloisters decorated with beautiful Sevillian tiles, and the crypt contains the tombs of San Martin de Porres –one of Peru’s most revered saints as well as the tomb of Santa Rosa de Lima.
The other church was San Francisco (who was probably turning in his grave in Assisi at all the elaborate Baroque gold decoration) which has in its crypt thousands of bones from people buried there in the past – all neatly stacked according to type. Gregg, as irreverent as ever, had this vision of them on the day of bodily resurrection (which as good catholics they all believed would happen) fighting over different thigh bones! I tell you that one is MINE…
* A line from 'The End' written by Jim Morrison and performed by The Doors on their self titled album released in January 1967 - it was also the song the band would perform to close their last ever concert with Jim Morrison.
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