On Saturday

Saturday was our tour of Lima. We circled lot of statue-filled plazas, wide boulevards, and ancient Spanish parks. We drove past a huge Inca pyramid that was built out of mud bricks. Millions of bricks. I don't believe these bricks were probably 4 or 5 times larger than modern bricks. Back in the day the pyramid used to have a flat spot on top that they said held huts. I wonder where all the bricks went because it isn't very large anymore. We went to a park that dates back to Spanish conquistadors. Pizarro apparently wanted olive trees and received about 12. Since then they had traced more than 50 trees in the park back to the originals. This park also contained the Argentine embassy. A beautiful yellow building. Architecture in this area can be traced to certain people. Incas built mud brick buildings with a flat grassy roof or no roof at all. Spaniards built medium pitched roofs to keep the rain off (What rain?). Central Europeans built high pitched roofs... for the snow.... Our guide didn't tell us this but all the buildings at one point were all the same color. But since all of the buildings are right next to each other, it became hard to tell each one apart. After that each house had to have a different color and they picked bright colors to catch your eye. We went past the Palace of Justice, more statued traffic circles, and a Sheridan. We had lunch at a buffet and one of my fellow students got the number of our waitress. That was a little weird. After that we went to the Presidential Palace where the president doesn't live. The fancy yellow mayor and government offices. We went to a park that had the old outer defensive walls of the old city. The park had a large statue of Pizarro on a horse. Really it is weird how the Spanish came in like they owned the country, killed, Christianized the natives, gave them diseases, and yet still honor him. The opposite mentality than we have in America. We walked over to another church that had the saintly relics of the three saints of Lima and Peru. Our guide didn't really seem to care but it was still interesting because all of the normal saintly relics are usually in Europe. The buildings in the old parts of Lima have balconies. I forget what our guide said about them. I think they had something to do about not being seen by commoners, and hiding women.