Overview
As part of our broader Peru vacation, we spent 4 full days in Lima (Miraflores area). What a beautiful city! The black cliffs meeting the green grass and ocean, with the skyscrapers in the background, what an incredible sight! We stayed at The Hilton Miraflores Lima Hotel. Although the hotel was set a 25-minute walk from Playa Makaha (closest beach and surf area), the hotel itself was wonderful, attentive door man, friendly staff, delicious restaurant on-site and a roof top pool/bar with incredible view of the city and water.
Day 1
Breakfast is a very important meal for me, I am a BIG fan of every type of breakfast food, so we decided to start our day out with having breakfast in the restaurant at the hotel. My kids are use to waffles or basic continental buffet breakfast at hotels, so when they were offered hot chocolate served to them at breakfast, their minds were blown! We enjoyed coffee, juices, mini pastries that came as a type of bread service and out breakfast dish. The first day in Miraflores we walked to Kennedy Park (Parque Kennedy), also known to my kids as the cat park; the park was tranquil with children playing on the playground and dozens of cats roaming freely, the cats were well groomed and taken care of by the ground’s workers.
Next we stopped at a local grocery store got Tres Leches and some GREEN oranges. I have no idea why, but I was so fascinated by the green oranges (basically green clementines) that we had at our hotel, so we decided to buy some to snack on. We all took turns tasting and drooling over the Tres Leches cake, the verdict was unanimous, it was the best we had EVER had.
After finishing our snacks, we took a 15-minute walk over to El Parque del Amor, a beautiful park with views of the water. We strolled around this park soaking in the views and wondered why there was a gigantic statue of two people kissing right in the middle of the park, my kids of course couldn’t help but giggle when they saw it.
The walk through El Parque del Amor took us toward Larcomar, which was also on our list of attractions to see while in Miraflores. Larcomar is an outdoor shopping mall that was built into a seaside cliff; the mall has a bunch of nature/outdoor stores like Patagonia and North Face as well as other stores like H&M, Banana Republic, Calvin Klein and more. The mall had a very cool food court and we stopped for a ceviche snack at one of the seafood restaurants, unfortunately I didn’t get the name of the restaurant, but the ceviche was decent.
We then headed over to Tanta within the mall for lunch. My kids have officially decided that Tanta, a Peruvian chain restaurant, was their absolute favorite restaurant of the vacation (we ate there at least 3-4 times in 4 days); my son Carter was obsessed with this restaurant the remainder of our time in Lima. The food at Tanta was delicious and consistent, which is why Ricky and I didn’t mind taking the kids back. The group favorite was the Chicharron sandwich and the Mango Huarango smoothie. The El De Chicharron sandwich was fantastic, so simple but so flavorful. The Mango Huarango smoothie was made of mango, orange and banana and had a texture more like a creamy juice, which was insanely easy to guzzle down after walking around in the heat all day. One thing to note, while the food was great, the service wasn’t very fast or attentive at Tanta, and while we recommend it because the food was great, I would recommend adjusting your service expectations and go when you have time to wait and go at their pace.
After a very filling and long lunch, we walked to the beach, Playa Makaha. The walk to the beach was gorgeous and required going to down many stairs. The beach was comprised of smooth rocks, no sand, which is always interesting to see since when we think of beach in the United States it is typically synonymous with sand. The water was quite choppy and lent itself well to my kids staying waist deep and jumping into the waves as they crashed onto the beach.
Ricky and I hung out on the shore, sitting on the surprisingly comfortable rocks and taking in the amazing sight of our kids having the time of their lives; complete reassurance that Peru would forever leave a lasting memory in our minds. Warning to the not physically in shape or have a physical limitation, I mentioned walking down many stairs, well when leaving the beach, we had to walk back up several flights of stairs to get to the road that would lead to our hotel. You most certainly can walk this at your own pace and take in the views as you do, however, my husband walks extremely fast, and I was quite winded trying to keep up with him and the kids. Again, worth it, beach was wonderful and relaxing, but please note the massive number of stairs if you aren’t someone who is very active or physically incapable of doing them.
