Cusco

my friends from california are visiting right now, and it's been super fun. i've just been spending money and hanging out. this is a photo of claudia and i in an "expensive" japanese restaurant in the miraflores neighborhood of lima. it's fun to eat in classy restaruants in latin america because by american standards, they are not that expensive.

alice's brother jon found this great hostel in the historic district of lima. there were pet tortoises and they just wandered around the hotel all day. at one point i went into our room, and there was a tortoise hanging out under the bed. we only spent one day in lima, and went to the san francisco church and saw the catacombs. unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos. but they were pretty crazy looking, just piles of dried up bones and skulls scattered below the church.

on sunday we flew from lima to cusco, the jumping off point to machu picchu. originally, cusco was the headquarters for the inca empire. the city was built in the shape of a puma, and contained many religious and ceremonial site. after the spanish conquest, the majority of the inca structures, were converted to spanish churches. this is the santo domingo church, but if you look at the foundation, you can see that it is built on top of an inca temple.
at first glance cusco looks like a spanish colonial city, but then everywhere you look are remnants of incan architecture. the huge stones of this wall are inca, but then on top is a spanish colonial contruction. i kind of wish you could erase all the spanish buildings to see what cusco looked like originally.
tomorrow we are going to take the train to machu picchu. it's been so great seeing my friends from home, and i can't wait to check out machu picchu. hope everyone is good. love,
-jessie