Why holidays are starting on day 3?
Well I allowed myself up to Saturday so 3 days,  to reach Lima due to the type of stand by ticket I had. Fortunately I made it on the fist attempt.
Friday is Nuria’s last working day. Her colleagues were leaving at 4:30pm so that was when our holiday officially started.
I spent most of the morning walking around. It is 15 degrees and cloudy and this neighborhood has no appealing.
At 4:30pm we said bye to her colleagues and jumped into a hotel taxi. Dammed it ended up costing 3 times more than the one we grabbed to go back.  $18 usd vs $18 soles. Anyway. We decided to go the the old town and I am glad we did. It is very nice.
We hesitated on whether we should also leave Lima today and fly to Arequipa nut we decided against. Mainly because we would land late and we are concerned about security.  We bought online tickets with Peruvian Airlines which are the cheapest,  for tomorrow Saturday at noon. That also gave us the opportunity to properly visit the old town. And I am glad we did it this way.
The itinerary we followed was the one suggested on the lonely Planet. We were dropped at plaza San Martín. We saw the gran hotel bolivar and then we took the pedestrian shopping street of Jiron de la Unión until plaza mayor. We walked around entering at the cathedral, taking some photos at the palacio de gobierno an d continued ti the parque de la muralla. It was closed because e it was already night. We went by the monasterio de San Francisco towards plaza bolivar. From there to mercado central and the barrio chino. Then back to plaza mayor where we had dinner at Tanta.
I had the Lomo saltado, a delicious typical dish, with pisco sour. Excellent. Nuria just a salad as he was not very hungry.
From there we took a cab back to the Melià hotel and went to bed. Tomorrow check out and to the airport.

Follow this trip at: http://tokao.com/trip/peru/