Lima

Machu Piccu has been on my bucket list for quite some time. And, in a late night panic study session during finals last year, I sized up my frequent flier mile situation, realized I had enough for a free trip to Lima, and booked myself a trip. While I had originally planned to go alone, I was thrilled when my buddy, Keith Lenart, decided to join me.

We got up bright and early to board our flights from Detroit. Well, I should say I got up bright and early. Keith was a smarty-pants and booked a much later connecting flight. That's okay though because one I got to Fort Lauderdale, I popped in my earplugs, claimed a slab of seats, and slept in the airport like it was my futon. Bonus that I only managed to drool on myself a little.

So, Keith and I met up in Fort Lauderdale, where he worked his magic and got us (free!) seats together on the flight to Lima (take that, Spirit Airlines seat-assignment-for-a-charge policy!).

Can you tell which one of us didn't sleep?

Happy to be on the plane! Significantly less happy about the six hour flight with zero legroom. But, hey, it was my first time in South America, and my excitement from that soon drowned out any leg cramps!

When we arrived in Lima, I couldn't get over how huge it was. I don't know why I was expecting a city of 10 million people to be quaint, but, in my head, I pictured some cute, ocean-side capital that I could lovingly place in my pocket. It was cute, and it was ocean-side. But, pocket-sized, it was not.

We got settled into our Ikea-esque hotel and planned out our day.


We toured around the city, checked out the shopping mall carved into a mountain, and had some vegan pizza and local beer. When I asked for "pizza without cheese," I'm pretty sure every server we had looked at me with a 'she must just suck at Spanish because there's no way she could possibly want pizza without cheese' expression on their face.

And now, onto some pictures from the day:

Said pizza.

Student loan repayment plan.