Peru - Prologue (day 1)
Originally published at BlackTabi Blog. You can comment here or there.
I’m still a little overwhelmed to try to sum up the wedding in a blog post, so I’m going to jump in to blogging about the honeymoon and sort through those photos first.
Matt and I didn’t get to each much cake at the wedding, aslide from the sliver we cut symbolically for the cake photos, so we were pleased to see that the hotel in Boston had thoughtfully left a cart in our room with champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, two slices of each flavor of cake (you’d hate to start a marriage by fighting over who got to eat the slice with strawberries), and the whole top layer of our cake. We made a stop off at home to drop off wedding-related paraphanalia and the cake top, then retired to our room to share the champagne and spend an hour taking 28 bobby pins out of my hair and combing out the snarls from the “teasing” the stylist had given it earlier.
We didn’t spend long in this hotel, as we were up early to meet Sheila in the hotel lobby and catch a shuttle to the airport. My dad happened to be hanging around, so we caught a ride with him and were off to Peru. (Except for Sheila. We waved goodbye to her at the bookstore inside the airport and went our separate ways.)
The flights and layover were pretty uneventful, which was a relief to me because I am not overly fond of flying and had been sort of worried about the prospect of taking a trip that required me to spend so much time on a plane. To my relief, the worst thing I suffered on this flight was boredom. Well, that and the in-flight movie was Swing Vote, which I can’t really recommend.
Upon landing in Peru, I decided not to haul out the camera because I was a little afraid of angering anyone in customs or getting in the way of large crowds while I gawked with the camera. It turns out that all the international flights get in around 10:30 at night, so there were throngs of travelers speaking a whole array of languages going through customs and picking up gigantic suitcases at the baggage claim. I looked around while Matt waited for the bags and got some money changed to see what the exchange rate was, and was secretly relieved to see that our giant suitcase was one of the lightest packing jobs of anyone on the plane. Customs was quick - a scan of the passports, a stamp in the book, and a check to make sure that our Immigration Card was in order before cautioning us not to lose the card because we’d have to show it at our hotels.
After we cleared customs and picked up our bags, we headed outside where we were greeted by a huge number of people waving signs with tourists’ names on them. We found the sign with our name, and a smiling travel agent met us by the gates so we could head into Lima. The airport was about 45 minutes from the hotel, so we amused ourselves by pointing out all of the restaurants we recognized, and noting the large number of veterinary offices in Lima. Our agent helped us check into the hotel (where we did need to show our immigration cards), explained when the agent we’d booked the trip with would be by in the morning to give us our itineraries, tickets, passes, etc, and bid us goodnight.
Our hotel in Lima was a pretty standard Marriot, and the room wasn’t terribly exciting.
One notable feature was the bathroom, which was huge and we agreed reminded us of the giant bathroom in the apartment inhabited by our friends Nat and Vicky - like their bathroom, we noticed, we could have at least 4 people using the bathroom at once given the separate tub and shower, ample sink and toilet space, and extra space for at least once person to pace around while gabbing on the bathroom phone.
More exciting was the food that had been left in our room, along with a card congratulating us on our marriage. Fruits and chocolates:
Cheese and crackers with champagne:
Let’s take a closer look at those chocolates for good measure:
Feeling a bit like royalty, we nibbled the snacks while filling out our room service order for breakfast; since we didn’t need to be anywhere early the next day, we decided we’d rather have a healthy standard breakfast after all the rich wedding food, weird plane food, and snacks, and lounge around the hotel saving energy for the rest of the week.
We admired the view from our hotel room (which didn’t photograph as well as it could have), and tried to guess what sorts of things were outside our hotel. The bright point you can see directly to the right of the center of this photo was a giant illuminated cross on top of a cliff by the ocean. We’re still not 100% sure why it was there - we heard at least two or three different stories from various tour guides and travel agents! The general consensus was that it probably has something to do with the Pope’s visit along with symbolizing peace after years of turmoil within the country.
With that, we pulled the drapes and fell into bed to rest up for the city tour of Lima we had scheduled for the following morning.